[NFBAZ-EastValleyChapter] BRAILLE MONITOR Vol 67 No 9 October 2024

[kicrawley.nfb at gmail.com]

Hello again East Valley Chapter!

It is that time again. The latest edition of the BRAILLE Monitor, the
flagship publication of the organized blind movement is here! This month’s
issue has been attached to this email. If you are not a fan of Word, it has
also been included in the body of this message for your convenience.

Congratulations to Chris Danielsen for being named as Associate Editor of
the BRAILLE Monitor. I believe this month’s edition marks his first issue in
the new role.

Shout out to Amy Porterfield for her contribution to this month’s issue.

Now, let’s get to it!


BRAILLE MONITOR


Vol. 67, No. 9
October 2024

Gary Wunder, Editor

Chris Danielsen, Associate Editor

 

                             Distributed by email, in inkprint, in Braille,
and on USB flash drive, by the

                                                               NATIONAL
FEDERATION OF THE BLIND

 

 
Mark Riccobono, President

 

 
telephone: 410-659-9314

 
email address:  <mailto:nfb at nfb.org> nfb at nfb.org 

                                                                  website
address:  <http://www.nfb.org> http://www.nfb.org 

 
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Letters to the President, address changes, subscription requests, and orders
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Monitor and letters to the editor may also be sent to the national office or
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and sent to:

 

 
National Federation of the Blind

                                                                200 East
Wells Street at Jernigan Place
 
Baltimore, Maryland 21230-4998

 

THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND KNOWS THAT BLINDNESS IS NOT THE
CHARACTERISTIC THAT DEFINES YOU OR YOUR FUTURE. EVERY DAY WE RAISE THE
EXPECTATIONS OF BLIND PEOPLE, BECAUSE LOW EXPECTATIONS CREATE OBSTACLES
BETWEEN BLIND PEOPLE AND OUR DREAMS. YOU CAN LIVE THE LIFE YOU WANT;
BLINDNESS IS NOT WHAT HOLDS YOU BACK. THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
IS NOT AN ORGANIZATION SPEAKING FOR THE BLIND—IT IS THE BLIND SPEAKING FOR
OURSELVES.

ISSN 0006-8829

© 2024 by the National Federation of the Blind




                Each issue is recorded on a thumb drive (also called a
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                You can transfer the recording of each issue from the thumb
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with the drive when you return the device.




 

 

Vol. 67, No. 9
October 2024

 


Contents


 

Illustration: Caravan for Disability Freedom and Justice visits the Jernigan
Institute

 

Being Trained in the Law but not Knowing How to Enforce My Right to
Accessible Textbooks.............. 

by Julie Orozco

 

Raising Expectations at Social Security: The Influence of the Organized
Blind in Improving and Modernizing Essential Programs

by Roderick Hairston

 

Uber Almost Got Me Killed!

by Ronza Othman

 

>From Lyndon Johnson to Joe Biden: A Journey through Sixty Years of White
Cane Safety Day Presidential Proclamations

by Kyle Walls

 

Consider Becoming a Teacher of Blind and Low-Vision Students or an
Orientation and Mobility Instructor

by Janna Kowalik

 

We Need Your Help

 

It Matters What We Do, Not Who We Are

by Geerat J. Vermeij

 

We Belong: A Report on Our Collective Progress toward Equality in America 

and Beyond

by the Advocacy and Policy Team

 

Another Extraordinary Experience at National Convention: A Journey Made for
Two

by Shelbi Felter

 

Statement of ABA President Mary Smith

 

Closing the Door on Discrimination: Championing the Blind in Society through
Civil Rights Protections at the Department of Justice

by Kristen Clarke

 

Telling Our Stories: A Conversation about Blindness, Justice, and Shattering
Misconceptions from the Federal Bench

by Judge David Tatel and Deepa Goraya

 

Settlement Agreement Improves Accessibility for Blind Test-Takers of the
California Insurance License Exam

 

Jonathan Mosen Brings His Expertise to the National Federation of the Blind

 

Nebraska Center for the Blind Celebrating Fifty Years Honoring the Past,
Shaping the Future

by Amy Buresh

 

National Association of Blind Rehabilitation Professionals Annual Division
Meeting: A Summary

by Amy Porterfield

 

My Dream, My Business, and My Life

by Vincent M. Tagliarino

 




 


Caravan for Disability Freedom and Justice visits the Jernigan Institute


 

The National Federation of the Blind was pleased to welcome the Caravan for
Disability Freedom and Justice, or Disability Caravan for short, to the NFB
Jernigan Institute on September 3 and 4, 2024. The Disability Caravan is a
collective of disabled people, and our allies, driving across America this
year, visiting several cities, including many that are important to the
history of the disability rights movement. On the morning of September 3,
the Caravan traveled from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, site of the
Federation’s founding in 1940, to our headquarters in Baltimore. For the
next two days, a number of Federationists and friends were able to visit the
Caravan and learn about its mission to share a message that encourages civic
engagement and voting, raises awareness of current issues facing the
disability community, and works to organize a national approach to address
these issues. The Caravan will continue its travels through November. If
you’d like to know more about it and whether it will be coming to your city,
you can visit its website at  <http://www.thedisabilitycaravan.com>
www.thedisabilitycaravan.com.  

 

Photo/Caption: Sandy, Janet, and the National Federation of the Blind staff
stand in front of the Caravan, a van equipped with a trailer and decorated
with a vibrant design of the American flag featuring other imagery and text.
Behind them is a large, four-story, brick building with a sign that reads
National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute.

 

Photo/Caption: President Riccobono and Sandy stand in front of the Caravan.

 

Photo/Caption: President Riccobono, Sandy and Janet stand talking to each
other outside of the Jernigan Institute. In the background is the Caravan.

--------

 

[PHOTO CAPTION: Julie Orozco]


Being Trained in the Law but not Knowing How to Enforce My Right to
Accessible Textbooks


by Julie Orozco

 

>From the Editor: What do people want from a print book? The most obvious
answer is that they want the text and pictures, but in many respects, this
is just the beginning of what we need if we are to compete. If we read a
novel from the National Library Service, we may not care about when the
author moves to a new paragraph or when the narrator turns a page. It may
not matter that we cannot jump directly to page sixty-six. But when in
school, navigation is almost as important as the accurate rendering of text,
and small errors that we all have become accustomed to when using optical
character recognition can directly translate to reductions in the letter
grade we receive.

 

In this article, Julie talks about the frustration of needing to do well in
law school and finding that her biggest barrier to doing so is not the
ability to understand legal concepts or engage in hours of hard work.
Instead, her problems were directly related to books that were provided by
the publisher but had significant errors in their text and no way to
navigate them. Imagine the frustration of training to become an advocate and
coming to realize that you don’t really know how to advocate for yourself in
a way that is timely and effective. Before I let Julie tell her own story,
let me say that she has completed law school and passed the bar exam on her
first try. This news does not lessen in any way the struggle she details
here and the work we must do to see that blind students are graded on what
they have the capacity to learn and on what they know. We must remain strong
in our commitment to see that the letter grades they receive are a
reflection of their accomplishments and not a reflection of the inaccessible
materials they receive.

 

I remember sitting in my first torts class on my second day of law school in
August 2020. Torts felt like an intimidating subject, even though it was
simply the study of legal wrongs like negligence. But my professor bellowed
at us over Zoom as we tried to keep up. Everyone was lost and confused as he
called out our names lightning fast, asking us questions we couldn’t pretend
to understand, and then shouting, “wrong!” when we couldn’t answer
adequately. Then, he started asking students, by name, to read sections of
our textbook aloud. The moment he asked the first student to turn to page
twenty-five and read the third paragraph, fear coursed through me. What if
he called on me? What would I say? I couldn’t find page twenty-five, and I
certainly couldn’t read a paragraph out loud in front of my class. I had
already answered one of his questions wrong. What would this professor think
when I couldn’t do something as basic as read words in a textbook? 

When I began my law school journey, I did not anticipate the accessibility
battles that awaited me. After successfully completing two undergraduate
degrees and a master’s degree, I was confident in my ability to advocate for
the accommodations I needed in school. I was also reassured by the nature of
the law school curriculum itself. Two of my previous degrees had been in
music, which required a variety of unique accommodations, including
specialized Braille music software. Law school, I thought, would be all
printed text and couldn’t be complicated. Our law school’s accommodations
office met with me multiple times before the beginning of the semester and
seemed to have a solid process in place for furnishing accessible textbooks
to students and granting other accommodations. My access coordinator
reassured me that the books would be in accessible formats and told me I
would not need a reader for my classes because everything would be
accessible for me with higher tech solutions. 

 

I was wrong to place my trust in professionals who did not know what made a
book accessible and did not understand the limits of screen reading and OCR
technology for the blind. I discovered how wrong I was at the beginning of
the first semester when I tried to open my torts book, and my computer
froze. The PDF file our accommodations office sent to me was so large my
computer could not open it. When I finally discovered a work-around for
opening my book, I was astonished to find that I could not locate page
numbers anywhere in the file. These huge files, containing over a thousand
pages, did not include page numbers that my screen reader could read. In
addition, my screen reader read the file in long blocks of text rather than
paragraphs, encountered plenty of typographical errors, and would sometimes
refuse to read by paragraph altogether. My torts book was the worst
offender, but all of my textbooks presented similar challenges. My civil
procedure book only gave me a page number at the beginning of each chapter.
Most of my books would omit charts entirely and forget about photo
descriptions. 

 

When I approached our access office about the problems I was having with the
books, they brushed off my concerns and assured me that they received these
books directly from the publishers. Our university believed that the
publishers were sending accessible books because that was the publishers’
duty, to send accessible copies of print textbooks upon request and with
proof of purchase. But these books were not accessible and were not giving
me the same reading experience as my colleagues. Our access office listened
when I sent them a panicked email after the torts class described above. I
attached the book and explained that I could not read aloud because I could
not find the referenced page numbers. My accommodations office suggested
that they tell the professor not to ask me to read aloud. This accommodation
did not sit well with me. I wanted actual solutions, not exemptions. When I
mentioned to friends and family that I could not read the page numbers on my
books, I was almost universally met with blasé attitudes and dismissive
shrugs. Some of these individuals had to scan their own books or dealt with
texts they could hardly read, and all I was complaining about amounted to a
fraction of my reading experience. Was I really dying on a hill made up of
inaccessible page numbers?

 

I chose to push back against our accommodations office about these page
numbers for a few reasons. First, I paid over $200 for some of these books
and believed that I should have the same access to the text, including page
numbers, as everyone else. I wanted to make things easier for blind students
to come rather than falling in line with the inaccessible standard. Second,
most of our assignments were built around page numbers. Our civil procedure
professor would give us reading assignments hundreds of pages apart. Our
torts professor would give us complicated instructions, asking us to skip
some pages and read others. I didn’t know which cases and sections to read
without the accommodations office speaking directly to my professors. Page
numbers are also reference points. In study groups, in class, and in office
hours, we all found cases and issues we wanted to review by turning to the
relevant page. Finally, it wasn’t only about the page numbers. These books
were clunky and formatted in such a way that I spent much longer on
assignments than I should have. I wanted the conversation around these books
to change, and the page numbers were an easy starting point. 

 

Despite my advocacy, the access office seemed reluctant to reformat my books
as I suggested. I started to speak to some of my academic advisors about my
textbooks and get their input and support. At the same time, I began to
realize that I needed a human reader as an accommodation after all. 

 

In the middle of the semester, I received my first grade on a legal writing
assignment. I had worked hard on this assignment, writing and revising long
into the night and making all the changes my professor recommended. I was
not expecting perfection, but when I saw my barely passing grade, I started
to feel discouraged. Many of the errors for which my professor took off
points were formatting mechanics. This was the semester when I learned about
the difference between straight and curved apostrophes. Did you know there
were two types of apostrophes? I also learned that the information my screen
reader was giving me about heading formats was not entirely accurate. Some
of my quotes were the wrong kinds of quotes. The list could go on. Some of
the mistakes I made I could learn to seek out with my screen reader, but
others amounted to aesthetics that I could not detect with my access
technology. 

 

I presented my disappointing legal writing grade to the accommodations
office and began to lobby for a reader. They refused. In their words, I
could not have an “assistant” because it would not be fair to the other
students. I attempted to explain that plenty of blind professionals use
readers to adjust formatting in their written work, but the office did not
budge. 

 

At this point, I was terrified. My legal writing class was only increasing
in intensity, and I didn’t want to fail a class in my first semester of law
school. Since it took me longer to complete my reading, and I spent
additional time with our teaching assistants to work on my legal writing, I
began missing required scholarship activities and internship fairs. I knew
that I couldn’t continue doing school like this. But I felt alone. I didn’t
know where to go for advice. Most people seemed to understand that law
school was hard, particularly during the pandemic, but my battles for
accommodations seemed insignificant when compared with the accessibility
challenges faced by others. 

 

I didn’t know where to begin, so I started talking to my professors on my
own. My legal writing professor let me work with our teaching assistants
longer than the other students. My civil procedure professor began modifying
assignments by describing videos or condensing our readings so that I could
have a lighter load. I did not ask for this, and she modified these
assignments for everyone. I also continued discussions with my academic
advisors, who started sending emails on my behalf. Once the accommodations
office started hearing from my advisors, they changed their tune about
negotiating with me. It helped that I also emailed one of the assistant
deans to describe my situation. 

 

I could not do anything to change my first semester grades or experience,
but in the second semester, I started to receive textbooks in word
documents, broken up by chapter with page numbers written out. The access
office also granted me a human reader as an accommodation. This reader
reviewed my formatting, helped me fill out inaccessible forms, and even
typed out entire sections of one of my textbooks that were inaccessible. Not
so surprisingly, my grades noticeably improved in the second semester. 

 

Throughout the remainder of my law school career, I continued to fight for
the accommodations I needed. The access office experienced a lot of
turnover, and their policies changed as they integrated with the
undergraduate office for accessibility. For the last two years I was in law
school, I was given an Aira plan instead of one human reader. 

I will never get my first semester of law school back. The grades I got are
alive and well on my transcript. But I hope I can help other students
advocate for the accommodations they know they need. Law school is a
challenging environment. Students read up to hundreds of pages a night,
prepare to be called on in class to recount all the facts and outcomes of
legal cases they may not even fully understand, and face increasing
pressures to find internships and build their resumes. Blind students
shouldn’t be expected to spend our time worrying about how we learn when the
learning itself is hard enough. 

---------- 

 

[PHOTO CAPTION: Roderick Hairston]


Raising Expectations at Social Security: The Influence of the Organized
Blind in Improving and Modernizing Essential Programs


by Roderick Hairston

 

>From the Editor: We are always engaged in a dialogue with the Social
Security Administration to improve services for blind people. It is more
than just benefits; it is access to its website, kiosks, and the way the
agency communicates with us. Mr. Hairston’s presentation dramatically shows
how our work is paying off with a greater emphasis by the Social Security
Administration in being responsive to the needs of blind consumers. Here is
what the deputy associate commissioner for the Office of Electronic Services
said to our 2024 National Convention on the morning of Monday, July 8, 2024:

 

Thank you for having us here at the National Federation of the Blind
convention. We really appreciate the invite and including us, and this
includes thanks for our partnership.

 

Today, as I was introduced, I’m Roderick Hairston, and I had to come all the
way to the NFB conference to meet my cousin, Ever Lee Hairston, which was a
treat—A complete treat. She knows all of my relatives. Did you know that the
Hairstons are the largest family in America? You probably know that if you
know Ever Lee.

 

I am wearing a navy suit, a blue and white striped shirt, and a green tie.
I’m vertically challenged, [chuckling] and a very proud member of the
Hairston family.

 

It’s also good to see my peeps from Virginia and North Carolina. That’s
where most of the Hairstons hail from. [Cheering] Good to see you.

 

The team and I are very excited to be here with you this week, and we hope
you had a few moments to stop by our exhibit that was mentioned earlier with
our check-in kiosk. With me here is my wonderful team of folks that have
been here with you all week: Heather Gray, Jeremy Rouse, and Angela Love.
Let’s give them a hand. [Applause]

 

I do believe it was a steady flow of folks who were coming through. I do
believe we probably saw upwards of a thousand folks over the whole time.
What was great about it was that it was a steady flow, and they got an
opportunity to really work hands on, one on one, with a lot of you in terms
of introducing the features at all of the kiosks. I’ll be telling you a
little bit more about that. If you didn’t get to the exhibit, I’ll tell you
a little bit more to tease you, and you’ll probably want to go to your
[Social Security] office and find out more about it.

 

During the last few days, we have had the privilege to provide you with the
opportunity to interact with a replica of the visitor check-in kiosk. As
part of our commitment to making our benefits, services, and technology
accessible to everyone, we have been very excited to share the kiosk with
you this week.

 

As early as 2018, the Social Security Administration began the process of
testing and working to modernize the kiosk by which visitors across the
nation check in to Social Security offices. In doing so, we analyzed
usability for users from various populations with varied types of
disabilities. In tandem we continue to work on software improvements and
enhancements to increase customer satisfaction and decrease cognitive
overload while using our check-in equipment.

 

As mentioned in the introduction, my career started around twenty-nine years
ago with the Social Security Administration. At that time, we assisted
customers with paper tickets. Boy, am I dating myself.

 

At that time we had no way of knowing anything about the customer before we
began our interaction. Customers didn’t have the ability to let us know if
they had special needs, why they were visiting, or if we needed to provide
any accommodation to ensure they had the highest quality of service
available. As technology has evolved, we’ve continuously sought out
partnerships with various communities to ensure the way we serve the
public—make sure that it fits the needs and meets and exceeds the
expectations of our customers.

 

We are continuing to enhance our public facing technology to provide an
accessible experience, not only for customers who are blind or have visual
impairments, but also for visitors with other accessibility concerns.

 

In 2023 we developed a truly accessible kiosk that would allow for an
individual experience—an equal experience for all.

 

Our goal remains to offer a universally accessible kiosk system that ensures
100 percent equal access for all users, thereby promoting equity in service
accessibility and user experience. Consistent with this commitment, we have
installed new visitor check-in kiosks with enhanced accessibility features.
Additionally, we’ve provided extensive training to our field office managers
and staff on how to use the new kiosk, and we have taught them all about the
new accessibility features. Our customers’ ability to check in at Social
Security offices is now easier than it's ever been, regardless of a
customer’s accessibility needs.

 

You may have had the opportunity to stop by the exhibit during the
conference, but in case you didn’t, in case you missed it, I want to share a
few other features. The kiosk cabinet itself is designed to meet
accessibility needs of all field office visitors. The design includes
specific features based on your input, government regulations, academic
research, and user studies performed by the Social Security Administration.
These studies and our continued testing of high-volume tasks related to
Social Security services emphasize a user-centric approach to identify and
address usability challenges, thereby fostering inclusive and accessible
services.

 

The touchscreen, the buttons, and the Braille instructions are all set at an
angle appropriate for all visitors. For durability the Braille instructions
are printed on a steel plate. All components are mounted internally for
security and provide a smoother surface for visitors to explore by touch.
There are no sharp edges. To protect privacy, there is a headphone socket
but no speakers. We supply complimentary headphones at the kiosk.

 

Plugging in headphones launches the audio interface and should be the only
modification a user may need to enhance their check-in experience.

 

To serve customers who are blind or low-vision, JAWS has been installed on
all kiosks. [Cheers and applause] It activates its audio feature when they
plug in their headphones. During the check-in session, the audio interface
tells customers what is on the screen and describes how to complete the
tasks, for example, how to use the keypad to answer questions. The
navigation keypad has a 3.5-millimeter headphones socket in the upper
right-hand corner with an audio label in Braille above it. Although
customers may have their own headphones, we also supply complimentary ones
like I mentioned earlier. The navigation keypad can also be used without
activating audio. This feature helps our customers in a wheelchair by
providing an option much closer to them than the touchscreen. The keypad
mirrors many modern TV remotes.

 

Along with the accessibility features of the kiosk, SSA has also dedicated
an email address for you to report any accessibility concerns that you might
have when interacting with the kiosk itself. That email is
<mailto:section508 at SSA.gov> section508 at SSA.gov. That can be found on a
Braille sticker on the kiosk itself. 

 

In addition to that, we offer customers the ability to check in to our
offices via their personal mobile device—mobile check-in. This means
regardless of a customer’s need, they can use their personalized settings on
their own device to navigate the check-in process according to their own
preferences. [Applause] This allows for a truly personalized accessible
experience even without the need to interact with our kiosk. 

 

Since October 2023, more than twenty-two million customers have visited our
offices already and interacted with our check-in kiosk and mobile services.
I think that’s amazing. [Applause] And I’ve got to make a plug for our
online services, in addition to our in-office services. There we provide
several types of things that you can do to apply for many different Social
Security benefits: retirement, spouse's benefits, disability benefits. You
can apply for Medicare only and extra help with Medicare prescription drug
costs. You can access our publication and our program rules to learn more
about our services, including provisions for working while receiving
benefits.

 

It may be important to note that there are provisions specific to customers
who are receiving disability benefits on blindness and return to work. This
information can be found in our publication titled “If You Are Blind or Have
Low Vision, How We Can Help.” That was available in our booth this week, and
you can also find that publication on our website at
<http://SSA.gov/pubs/en-05-10052.pdf> SSA.gov/pubs/en-05-10052.pdf. If you
did not have a chance to pick up one of those publications during the week,
you can go there to find it. It’s offered in audio format as well as in
languages other than English. Since everyone’s situation is different,
whether you're on SSI or Disability Benefits, we suggest either reviewing
our specific work-related publications or contacting your local field office
and other resources to get personalized assistance.

 

Speaking of personalized information, if you haven’t already, we encourage
you to set up your own My Social Security Account by visiting
<http://SSA.gov/myaccount> SSA.gov/myaccount. I hope many of you already
have that. It’s a great way to access services securely. This is a free and
secure My Social Security Account that provides personalized tools for
everyone, whether you receive benefits or not. I think you can already tell
I’m a tech geek. I’m talking about my tools here. You can use your account
to access certain notices online, request a replacement Social Security
card, check the status of an application, get an estimate of future
benefits, or manage the benefits you already receive. You can do all of
that. You can make changes or update your benefits record, like your address
or your direct deposit.

 

We also offer options for specialized notice formats to persons who are
blind or visually impaired. These are notices that you can receive in other
communications and formats other than standard print, including but not
limited to options such as Braille notices, data CDs that have notices in
Word format, large print notices, and audio CDs. You know, technology
continues to change rapidly, so a lot of folks aren’t using CDs anymore, but
we are assessing those types of advances continuously, evaluating and
looking to make changes and updates in that regard. This allows our agency
to make sure that we are serving the needs of all of our customers, so look
for updates in that arena.

 

More than seventy million people depend on Social Security benefits, and
millions more reach out each year for other services like requesting a new
Social Security card. We’re working hard to provide our customers with the
service that they expect.

 

In February 2024, Commissioner Martin O’Malley launched something called
“Security Stat.” If you haven’t heard about that, it’s a performance
measurement tool. He used it when he was mayor of Baltimore. He used it when
he was governor of the state of Maryland, and he’s brought that right into
his work as the Commissioner for the Social Security Administration. That
tool is helping Social Security set goals. It’s helping us choose actions
that are priorities and helping us track the progress in meeting these
challenges. For information about these goals—you can find them, and you can
also see our progress in each one of these areas on our website—again,
<http://SSA.gov/> SSA.gov.

 

In discussions with NFB leadership, we understand that some of the areas of
interest of NFB members are disability processes, return to work provisions,
as well as overpayment remediations. We would also like you to know that
these are some of the agency’s areas of focus with Security Stat.
Commissioner O’Malley has implemented Security Stat to place emphasis and
focus on these specific areas as well.

 

As part of Security Stat and to be transparent with the public, our progress
is regularly updated on our website. Again, I’m talking about
<http://ssa.gov/securitystat> ssa.gov/securitystat. You will be able to find
that information for yourselves. Here you will find great information about
the steps that the agency is taking to be more effective for the customers
that we serve. You will learn about these things on which we already have
begun to make progress: our work to reduce a number of pending hearings to
the lowest level in over thirty years. [Applause]

 

Part of this success comes from our changes to policies involving disability
determinations. We’ve updated the way we review a person’s relevant work
history when making decisions on applications for disability benefits. There
are a number of considerations in disability applications processes. In
addition to reviewing medical records, we review the ability to continue to
engage in work that will provide a substantial gainful income, or what some
may know as SGA. Previously, we considered the past fifteen years of work
when determining whether a person has the work experience to continue to
earn SGA since the date their medical condition first affected their work
activity. Moving forward we will now consider only the past five years of
work experience in the disability determination process. [Applause] That’s a
big one.

 

Also on Security Stat, you will learn about how we’ve changed our
calculations for determining SSI eligibility and subsequently the SSI
payment amount. Since SSI is a needs-based program, we have guidance on how
to consider informal assistance that a person receives on a monthly basis.
This informal assistance is sometimes counted as a form of income, thereby
reducing the monthly SSI payment. However, we are updating these guidelines.
For example, beginning September 30, we will no longer count assistance with
food expenses as a type of informal income. [Applause] Yes! This change will
bring more consistency in an individual’s monthly SSI payments and reduce
some documentation requirements at the same time.

 

Additionally, Security Stat has information on how SSA is working to address
improper payments, adjusting the way that we collect repayments, as well as
implementing steps to reduce the backlog of pending underpayments to our
claimants. Along with this information, you can also find information on how
our agency is simplifying our processes with technology enhancements where
we can. We are working to reduce the paper burden on both our customers and
our employees.

 

These efforts will help streamline and modernize our workloads, ultimately
resulting in better service to the public. We continue to strive for the
utmost level of service to our customers, and we continue to lean into new
technology and processes. We believe there is a bright future ahead, and we
look forward to continuing our partnership with you to get to that future.
[Applause]

 

In closing, again, I want to appreciate the National Federation of the Blind
for inviting Social Security this week, allowing us to share with you the
work that we’ve been doing to try to improve on the services we are
providing, and we look forward to continuing the work with you and your
membership for future endeavors. Again, we hope that you have the
opportunity to interact with our accessible kiosk and hope you have a
wonderful time during the remainder of this last day of your conference.
Thank you so much for the opportunity. [Applause]

 

---------- 

[PHOTO CAPTION: Ronza Othman]


Uber Almost Got Me Killed!


by Ronza Othman

 

>From the Associate Editor: This article originally appeared in the Summer
2024 issue of the Braille Spectator, the publication of the National
Federation of the Blind of Maryland. We are reprinting it with light edits.
Ronza Othman serves as president of that affiliate. She is also president of
the National Association of Blind Government Employees and of the National
Association of Blind Lawyers, chairperson of our Code of Conduct Feedback
Committee, an active member of the Blind Muslims Group, and more, all on top
of her high-pressure day job with the federal government. Despite already
having all of these roles, she jokes she is eager to assume yet another as
the next Disney princess. In a much less lighthearted vein, we note that the
details in this article may profoundly disturb some readers, but we feel it
is an important story to tell. It highlights not only the continued
discrimination experienced by blind people at the hands of rideshare drivers
but also how Ronza’s intersecting characteristics and ignorance of
disability rights on the part of a member of law enforcement escalated an
already tense situation to a traumatic, but thankfully not tragic, event. It
is clear from Ronza’s experience that Uber has not done enough to educate
its drivers, or even its customer service personnel and supervisors on its
policy forbidding discrimination against blind passengers with guide dogs.
That is why, as this issue of the Braille Monitor goes to press,
Federationists from across the nation are preparing to conduct a rally
before the headquarters of both Uber and Lyft, the country’s two leading
rideshare providers. Here is Ronza’s story:

 

Discrimination against the blind is an all-too-frequent occurrence, but
sometimes how companies and law enforcement respond could literally get us
killed. Uber discriminated against me and a fellow passenger who uses a
guide dog in July of 2023, and instead of protecting me as the law requires,
local law enforcement instead held me at gunpoint and treated me like I was
the criminal. Then, after I didn’t die at the hands of the police (probably
because my friends were filming the encounter on their phones) and filed a
report with Uber, Uber summarily kicked me off their platform in retaliation
for my complaint.

 

On the first night of the 2023 NFB National Convention in Houston, the
National Association of Blind Lawyers got together for dinner at the home of
one of our division board members. We brought along some other lawyers,
because we tend to travel in packs, including Eve Hill, the lawyers’ lawyer
and NFB General Counsel. I also brought along three NFB National Scholarship
finalists, two of whom were going into law. One of the students had a guide
dog. We had a wonderful dinner, and everyone left in a jubilant mood.

 

I called an Uber to take my group of four bipeds and a quadruped back to the
hotel around 10:15 p.m.; the driver, Troy, was driving a black Mercedes—I’ll
never forget that detail. I got into the vehicle first, sitting in the
middle of the back seat. One of the students and her guide dog got in behind
the driver. One of the other students got in the passenger-side back seat on
my other side, and the third sat in the front seat.

 

The driver looked back as we were getting settled and asked, “Is that a
dog?” I remember thinking something snarky, like “No, it’s a whale.” But I
didn’t answer, because it wasn’t my service animal.

 

The student who was the handler said it was a guide dog. The driver, Troy,
immediately started fussing at us, stating at least twenty times that this
was a “sixty-thousand-dollar Mercedes.” The student calmly responded that
her dog was a service animal that was protected under the ADA.

 

Troy began shouting at us to get out of his car. He said that he had the
right to refuse to take whoever he wanted, and that we had to call Uber Pet.
We responded that service animals are not pets, and thus we did not have to
call Uber Pet.

 

The student with the guide dog and I decided we were not going to exit the
vehicle because the driver had an obligation to take us under the ADA. The
driver got out of the vehicle and began shouting in the street. This was a
quiet neighborhood, fairly upscale, and fairly quickly we attracted notice.

 

Meanwhile, the rest of our friends came out of the house, and there was once
again a gaggle of lawyers, this time standing on a Houston sidewalk nearing
midnight. What happened next seems surreal.

 

As the driver continued to shout about his sixty-thousand-dollar Mercedes,
both of the students on the passenger side of the vehicle decided to leave
the car. The student with the guide dog and I decided to stay.

 

Troy then opened the driver’s side back door, reached into the car, and
tried to physically yank the guide dog out of the car. The student was
holding onto the dog’s harness, but when Troy started using his might to try
to force the dog out of the vehicle, she wrapped her arms around the dog to
keep her from being pulled away from her. She began to shout at the driver
to stop pulling on her dog, that he was hurting the dog, and that she was a
service animal. Troy did not stop for several minutes. The student began to
slide out of the car herself because Troy was pulling on the dog so hard. I
wrapped my arms around the student to keep her from being pulled out of the
car. I believed if Troy was successful at forcing the guide dog or the
student from the car, they’d both fall on the ground and be hurt.

 

As I held onto the student, Troy started pulling on me too. He used so much
force that all three of us—the student, the guide dog, and I—were all
sliding slowly out of the car.

I also started shouting at Troy to stop pulling on us. Eventually, he took a
break and walked away from the car.

 

I called 911 to report a physical assault. They took my report and told me
someone from the Houston Police Department would come soon. They did not
stay on the phone with me like they show in the movies.

 

After I hung up with Emergency Services, I called Uber to file a complaint.
While I was on the phone with Uber Support, Troy came back and did it again.
He pulled, using all of his might, on the guide dog and the student to force
them out of the car. I had my arm around the student’s shoulder to comfort
her, so he pulled on me too. The Uber customer support person on the phone
did nothing except take the report.

 

After this second assault and battery, the guide dog was very agitated, and
the student was extremely upset. We didn’t know if the dog had been hurt,
and if so, how badly. The student decided to get out of the car so she could
have enough room to check out the dog and catch her breath. I stayed in the
vehicle, because I knew that if I also got out, the driver would just get in
the car and leave, resulting in no accountability for his actions.

I have to pause and give you a quick lesson in the law that you might or
might not already know. Assault is a crime—it is when someone takes an
action that places another in imminent fear of a battery. Battery means
unwanted physical touching. So, Troy both assaulted and battered the student
and me. To compound the issue, a guide dog, like a cane or wheelchair, is,
under the law, an extension of the person with a disability. That means that
if someone intentionally batters a guide dog while it is working, then
they’ve battered the human handler. When Troy grabbed the guide dog and
tried to forcibly remove her by pulling her from the car, and since the
student was holding the harness and then the dog, Troy battered and
assaulted the dog and the student. Then, when I tried to help her by
anchoring her and he grabbed and yanked on me, he battered and assaulted me
too.

They teach you about assault and battery literally on the first day of law
school, but as you’ll come to see, somehow two police departments and a
multi-national company don’t know what it is.

 

Apparently, in response to the commotion, one of the neighbors called their
local police department, which resulted in a faster response from Harris
County law enforcement compared with Houston PD. Two police officers from
Harris County arrived within twenty minutes of the incident. However, they
were not there to help! In fact, instead of helping the student and me, the
clear victims here, they nearly shot me—an unarmed brown woman.

 

After hanging up with Uber, I called Cayte Mendez, who serves as the chair
of the Scholarship Committee, to let her know that three scholarship
finalists and I were in the midst of an Uber denial that turned into an
assault, for which we were waiting for law enforcement intervention. I also
asked my lawyer friends standing on the sidewalk to call Eve Hill, NFB
General Counsel, who by that time had made it back to the hotel. Both Cayte
and Eve were on the phone with us when the next horrible thing happened.

 

Troy managed to get to the Harris County police officers before anyone else,
and as best as I can tell, he told them that he was afraid of me, that I
refused to leave his vehicle after he decided he didn’t feel “safe” driving
me, and that he believed I may have a weapon. He used incorrect and negative
stereotypes about brown and Muslim people, and they believed him.

 

Throughout this ordeal, my lawyer friends, including the homeowner, were
standing on the sidewalk, less than ten feet away from the car. When Harris
County police pulled up, the homeowner shared with us that Harris County
provides neighborhood support but that Houston police is the entity that
handles real crime. He shared that the Harris police provide a sort of
neighborhood watch function, similar to mall police.

 

As I sat in the back seat of the vehicle, with the windows open, talking to
Cayte on the phone, a female police officer slowly walked up to the car on
the right side. I learned later there was another police officer nearby
covering her. She shouted at me to put my hands where she could see them.
She did not identify herself, and I had no idea who she was or that she was
a cop. I was holding my phone in one hand and the other was empty. My cane
was telescoped on the floor at my feet. I was the only person left in the
vehicle.

For a bit of context: I’m brown, Muslim, a woman, and blind. I wear a
religious head covering called a hijab, which makes me very obviously Muslim
to the sighted. My family are refugees, and I’m a United States citizen.
Houston is much more open to immigrants and people of color than other
places in the southern United States, but I still harbor the same anxiety as
many immigrants and people of color do when visiting some of the southern
states. In fact, I carry my US passport in my bra at all times for my safety
so I can quickly prove I am a citizen.

 

I dropped the phone—I don’t know if I even said goodbye to Cayte or not—and
raised my hands. The officer then directed a very strong flashlight into my
face, which was incredibly startling. Once she saw me sitting there, she
began to speak very loudly and slowly, as though I didn’t comprehend the
English language.

 

As she continued to flash the light into my face, I told her that I was
blind and needed her to identify herself. She initially did not and
continued to speak to me in a loud, condescending voice. Eventually, she
moved the flashlight away from my face, and as I readjusted to the lighting,
I realized that she was gripping her weapon in her other hand. I was being
held at gunpoint by Harris County police simply for being blind, brown, and
Muslim.

 

She eventually told me she was Harris County police; I don’t know if she
ever told me her name or not. She asked me if I had a weapon. I told her I
did not. She asked me if anything was on the floor of the car. I told her,
once again, while she held me at gunpoint, that I was blind and that my cane
was on the floor at my feet. She asked me what else was on the floor, and I
told her that I did not know because I did not own the vehicle.

 

She did not ask me any questions or take my statement before deciding I was
the threat. I had called 911, but I was now the person with a gun on me.

 

She told me that since it wasn’t my vehicle, I was trespassing, and that the
“nice gentleman” had a right to kick anyone he wanted out of his car. I told
her that my friends and I were Uber passengers, that we had disabilities,
and that he had a legal obligation to transport us under the Americans with
Disabilities Act. Meanwhile, I was trying not to panic as she still held her
weapon on me.

 

She ordered me out of the vehicle and told me to keep my hands up at all
times. I told her once again that I was blind, that I needed my cane to
safely exit the vehicle, and that I’d like to retrieve it first. Initially,
she was not going to let me retrieve my cane, but at that point her fellow
officer walked up and told her that she should let me use it. He whispered
that everyone around the car had a cane, so I likely wasn’t making up my
blindness.

 

She shone the light on the floor of the vehicle to see that the cane was the
only item there, and she ordered me to pick it up with one hand while the
other was still raised. I did so.

She opened the door, and I slowly exited the vehicle, still holding my hands
up. I asked if I could retrieve my phone from the car, which was on the
seat, and the other officer got it and handed it to one of my friends.

 

The female Harris County police officer asked for my name—still in that
loud, slow tone—and I told it to her. She asked me for my driver’s license,
and I told her I didn’t drive. She responded, “Undocumented, I thought so.”
I replied that I had a valid ID, that I was a US citizen, and that I didn’t
have a driver’s license because I am blind. She ordered me to show her my
ID.

 

I began to move my hand toward my passport but quickly realized that given
how ignorant and suspicious this officer had been thus far, moving my hand
toward my chest rather than my purse would escalate the situation. I
verbally talked her through what I was doing. I was wearing a very small
cross-body purse, small enough to hold only my phone, a thin wallet, and my
AirPods.

 

I narrated everything I did before I physically did it. I told her I was
going to open the flap of my purse using just the thumb and forefinger on my
right hand. I told her I was going to reach in with those same fingers to
remove a pink wallet. I told her I was using those same two fingers to open
the wallet to show her my state ID. I handed over the wallet, and she looked
at it, then ordered me to remove the ID from the wallet and give it to her.
At this point, she appeared to me to holster her gun, and I gave her my ID.
I told her my passport was in my bra and asked if she wanted to see it. She
responded, “Not yet.”

 

As she took my ID from me, one of my friends told her that she should Google
me while she had my name and information. She ordered me to stay put and
went off to her vehicle, I assumed to run me through law enforcement
databases. I collapsed onto the ground, right there, at the side of the
road. My legs could not hold me up anymore.

 

At some point, my friends had begun recording the encounter, but I’m not
sure exactly when they began recording—I haven’t had the mental energy to
watch the video. Eve Hill was also on the phone for all or most of it. But
that wasn’t the end, not by a longshot.

 

While I waited to be run through all the law enforcement databases, my
friends filled me in on what I’d missed, including what they heard Troy tell
the Harris County officers. They also shared that several of them had showed
Harris County PD the Uber website that specifically states Uber’s
nondiscrimination policy and that denying service to service animal users
violates the law and Uber’s policies. Apparently, that wasn’t good enough
either.

 

We also realized that our host had a video surveillance system on his home
that likely captured the incident and its aftermath. In fact, the camera
footage shows the driver yanking on the dog, the student, and me both times
and much of the Harris County police department’s actions. The cell phone
recordings my friends took show much of the same with sound.

 

Eventually, the lady officer from Harris County returned, giving me back my
ID. She told me again that Troy was just a “nice man” who wanted to keep his
expensive vehicle clean. I responded that people with disabilities are not
dirty, and neither are our dogs. I also reiterated that the ADA prohibits
Uber drivers from refusing service to guide dog handlers and others with
disabilities. She said that Uber had to handle this. I told her I had filed
a complaint with Uber, but that since the driver assaulted and battered the
student and me, this was now a criminal issue as well, and that law
enforcement was required to enforce the antidiscrimination laws. The student
and I told her we wanted to press charges against the driver. She ordered me
to get the person from Uber with whom I filed the report on the phone. I
told her I’d try, but Uber has a lot of customer service people. I called
Uber, waited on hold, and eventually got connected to a different agent than
previously.

 

I told Uber I was calling because I was with law enforcement who wanted to
verify I’d called previously to file a report and to ask them questions.
Initially, the Uber representative informed me that they would not talk to
law enforcement. The female Harris County officer insisted, so I asked for a
supervisor. I eventually was transferred to a supervisor, I explained the
situation, and the supervisor agreed to talk to the police officer. This all
was on speaker phone, and what happened next was also on speaker phone.

 

The police officer asked if a driver has the right to refuse to drive
someone if they have a guide dog, and the Uber representative said, “Yes,
the driver can refuse to drive anyone they wish.” If I hadn’t already been
sitting on the ground, I’d have fallen over. This is a supposed supervisor
in the escalation department at Uber, and they don’t even know the law or
their own policies? We all, including Eve Hill on the phone, started
shouting that this was not true.

 

The police officer asked the phone representative from Uber to share the
policy that gives drivers the right to refuse anyone, which frankly stunned
me because I didn’t think that Harris County officer was capable of getting
to actual true facts. The Uber representative put us on hold, and after
about ten minutes, returned and read from the website that my friends had
previously shown the officer, which said the exact opposite of what the
representative had originally said.

 

At no time did Harris County take my statement or anyone else’s. At no time
did they gather evidence or try to figure out what happened. They took a
cursory look at the dog and said, “She looks fine to me.” They told us this
was a civil matter and to work through Uber. We reiterated we were assaulted
and battered and wanted to press charges, and they reiterated that we and
the dog weren’t physically hurt from their perspective, thus this was a
civil matter.

 

At that point, about two and a half hours after the incident began, Houston
PD finally showed up. This was a vastly different experience from Harris
County. The responding Houston PD officers took our individual statements,
understood that the driver could not refuse services to passengers with
guide dogs, and treated us with dignity and respect. They also told Harris
County PD they had it from there and sent the Harris County officers away.

 

We told them we had recordings and showed them to Houston PD. Nonetheless,
they, too, did not immediately press charges or allow us to do so. They
informed us that their local prosecutor would review the reports and videos
and make a determination within a few days. They obtained Troy’s contact
information and released him. Roughly three and a half hours after the
ordeal began, we returned to the hotel. A few days later, Houston PD
informed us that the local prosecutor had declined to bring criminal charges
against Troy.

 

Meanwhile, I supplemented my report to Uber to add additional details. Three
days after Uber nearly got me killed by Harris County PD, they kicked me off
the Uber platform. Apparently, in an effort to try to save his job with
Uber, Troy filed a complaint against me, stating I threatened him and had a
weapon in his vehicle. This was in direct retaliation for my complaint
against him. Though my supplemental report to Uber explained how Troy lied
to law enforcement and the effect, Uber still, without ever talking to me or
doing any sort of investigation, suspended my account. This is a gross
injustice, because if anyone who complains is subject to retaliatory
suspension, then every person with a disability who tries to protect their
rights, as described by the law and Uber’s own policy, will be removed from
the platform simply for exercising their rights.

 

I shared what had happened with President Riccobono, and he contacted Uber
himself. Uber executives were at the convention, and President Riccobono
arranged a meeting for those executives, John Paré, the scholarship
finalists and me. Uber made a lot of promises and commitments, but more than
a year later, I’ve not seen any of them come to fruition.

I filed two complaints with the [United States] Department of Justice (DOJ)
about this experience—one against Harris County Police, and the other
against Uber. DOJ closed the complaint against Harris County Police with no
action. I have not yet heard any information about the Uber complaint.

 

What happened to my companions and me isn’t rare. There isn’t a week that
goes by that I don’t hear from someone about a rideshare denial because of
their guide dog or long white cane. These denials mean that blind people are
late for work, medical appointments, worship services, and so on. The fact
that Uber personnel didn’t know the law, or their own policies is
unforgivable. The fact that law enforcement doesn’t know the law is
disgusting and terrifying.

---------- 

[PHOTO CAPTION: Kyle Walls]


>From Lyndon Johnson to Joe Biden: A Journey through Sixty Years of White
Cane Safety Day Presidential Proclamations


by Kyle Walls

 

The year is 1963, the month is September. NASA prepares its Project Gemini
craft for an uncrewed mission that will launch in seven months. In the world
of entertainment, Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra dominates the box office for
the third straight month, “My Boyfriend’s Back” by The Angels and “Blue
Velvet” by Bobby Vinton top the radio requests, and classic television shows
The Fugitive, The Outer Limits, and Petticoat Junction, all premier. CBS
becomes the first network to broadcast a half-hour national news show with
the premier episode of the CBS Evening News, anchored by Walter Cronkite. In
sports, the 100,000th American Major League Baseball game is played between
the Washington Senators and the Cleveland Indians (Washington wins 7-2), and
the Pro Football Hall of Fame opens its doors for the first time in Canton,
Ohio. On the American political scene, the White House confirms in a press
release that President Kennedy will be making a now-infamous trip to Dallas,
Texas, later in the year, and on September 24, a long-time representative
from the state of Pennsylvania, Robert Corbett, at the urging of the
National Federation of the Blind, introduces House Joint Resolution 753 in
Congress. The resolution reads, in its entirety: 

 

To authorize the President to proclaim October 15 of each year as White Cane
Safety Day.

 

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of
America in Congress assembled, That the President is hereby authorized to
issue annually a proclamation designating October 15 as White Cane Safety
Day and calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day
with appropriate ceremonies and activities. 

 

It takes almost an entire year before the resolution passes the House on
August 17, 1964, and is then passed by the Senate a little over a month
later, on September 24, exactly one year after its introduction. Just under
two weeks later, the resolution officially becomes Public Law 88-628 when it
is signed by President Lyndon Johnson. On that same day, President Johnson
issues the very first White Cane Safety Day proclamation stating, “A white
cane in our society has become one of the symbols of a blind person's
ability to come and go on his own. Its use has promoted courtesy and special
consideration for the blind on our streets and highways. To make our people
more fully aware of the meaning of the white cane, and of the need for
motorists to exercise special care for the blind persons who carry it, the
Congress, by a joint resolution approved October 6, 1964, has authorized the
President to proclaim October 15 of each year as White Cane Safety Day.” And
with that, an annual day to recognize blind Americans and our most
widely-used mobility aid is born. 

 

Over the next couple of years, the text of President Johnson’s White Cane
Safety Day proclamations would remain largely similar to that initial
version. However, in 1967, he gets a little creative and decides to
recognize the driving force for the proclamation in the first place. The
1967 proclamation reads, in part, “The White Cane has become the emblem of
the blind American’s determination to live the most independent,
constructive life possible. Since the foundation of the National Federation
for [sic] the Blind in 1940, the White Cane has symbolized the aspirations
and abilities of the blind. Available to every blind American, it is his
passport to self-sufficiency.”

 

Two years later, President Richard Nixon releases his 1969 proclamation on
May 20 (the White Cane Safety Day proclamations of the late 1960s and 1970s
were frequently released in the summer, and sometimes even in the spring).
As the entire nation would so proudly display its determination and
confidence exactly two months later with the moon landing on July 20,
President Nixon uses this proclamation to declare the white cane as “A
symbol of the blind person's determination to help himself and to live a
normal life,” and declare that, “A blind man or woman using a white cane can
travel with greater confidence and safety on the Nation’s streets.”

 

In 1976, as the nation observes the bicentennial celebration of its
independence, President Gerald Ford chooses to focus this year’s White Cane
Safety Day proclamation on the independence the tool affords to the blind.
He writes, “One of the basic rights which we as Americans cherish is the
freedom of each citizen to move, without barriers, about this great land. .
. the white cane is both an instrument and symbol of independence. . . A
pathfinder, not a crutch. . . the white cane provides the confidence to
venture forth, to experience the world, and to participate fully in life.”

 

As the United States approaches the end of a decade marked by an exit from
the controversial Vietnam conflict, the Watergate scandal, and a turbulent
economy, President Jimmy Carter writes in his 1978 White Cane Safety Day
proclamation that for blind people, “the white cane is an invaluable tool
with which they can move about confidently and, most important,
independently. . . providing assurance that the path ahead is clear and
safe.” It is highly unlikely that his words are intended to be a reassuring
signal to a distressed nation, but looking back on history, they almost seem
that way. 

 

In the 1980s, a decade frequently remembered for its excesses, President
Ronald Reagan keeps his White Cane Safety Day Proclamation of 1985
noticeably shorter, but no less on point. He writes, “Americans admire
courage and respect independence.” He goes on to proclaim that the white
cane is “carried by those blind and visually impaired citizens who believe
freedom and independence are meant for all Americans. The white cane tells
the world that its bearer expects not pity but fairness and consideration—on
the street, on the job, and everywhere Americans’ paths cross.”

 

As the 1980s become the 1990s, all disabled Americans have another milestone
to mark along the path toward equality. In his 1990 White Cane Safety Day
proclamation, President George Bush writes, “Each year, during the
observance of White Cane Safety Day, we renew our commitment to eliminating
physical and attitudinal barriers that continue to hinder the full
participation of blind persons in our society. On this White Cane Safety Day
we also celebrate the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.” The
Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law by President Bush less
than three months before his 1990 proclamation, but certainly gives cause
for some additional celebration this year. 

 

Nine years later, as the country approaches the end of the millennium,
President Bill Clinton focuses on a somber moment in Federation history in
his 1999 White Cane Safety Day proclamation. He chooses to pay a fitting
tribute to an iconic leader of the movement when he writes, “Dr. Kenneth
Jernigan, former President of the National Federation of the Blind who died
just a year ago this month, was an early advocate of the white cane and the
full integration of blind people into every aspect of society. Dr. Jernigan
used the white cane himself and recognized its power as a means to allow
blind people to leave the confines of their homes for the outside world—to
go to school and to work and to make ever-greater contributions to their
communities.”

 

With the turn of the millennium having passed and the fears of the Y2K
glitch starting to subside, the United States turns its focus forward to the
prospects and promises of a new era. White Cane Safety Day begins to take on
a larger meaning. It becomes less about the white cane itself and more about
the people who use it. In his 2001 White Cane Safety Day proclamation,
President George W. Bush writes a message of hope for Americans with
disabilities: “National White Cane Safety Day . . . represents a declaration
of freedom . . . The core principles of our country promise freedom,
justice, and hope; and these principles should guarantee the opportunity for
every disabled American to live full and productive lives. The new
millennium brings with it a renewed pledge to ensure that no citizen is
prevented from realizing the American dream because of a disability.”

 

The United States would elect a new president to end the 2000s and usher in
the 2010s, and at the beginning of the new decade, White Cane Safety Day
would also get a new name to reflect the updated focus of the day begun
under the previous administration. President Barack Obama, the nation’s 44th
president, and the ninth president to issue annual White Cane Safety Day
proclamations, renames October 15, 2011, to Blind Americans Equality Day. He
writes in the opening paragraph of his proclamation: “Generations of blind
and visually impaired Americans have dedicated their passion and skills to
enhancing our national life—leading as public servants, penning works of
literature, lending their voice to music, and inspiring as champions of
sport. On Blind Americans Equality Day, we celebrate the achievements of
blind and visually impaired Americans and reaffirm our commitment to
advancing their complete social and economic integration.” The name change
sticks, and October 15 of every year going forward is recognized as Blind
Americans Equality Day.

 

Nearly one-fifth of the way into the twenty-first century, and more than
fifty years since the first proclamation, the focus of Blind Americans
Equality Day has now fully shifted from a day to celebrate the white cane as
a symbol of independence and freedom to one that recognizes the potential of
all blind Americans if granted equality and opportunity. In his 2018
proclamation, President Donald Trump renews the nation’s focus on the
achievements of blind Americans and the importance of ensuring equality when
he states, “On Blind Americans Equality Day, we recognize the contributions
that Americans who are blind and visually impaired make to our country, and
the value of creating greater opportunities for all people to live full and
independent lives. Despite facing challenges, Americans who are blind and
visually impaired continue to achieve their dreams and strengthen our
communities.” 

 

As we approach the end of our sixty-year trip through the history of these
Blind Americans Equality Day presidential proclamations, it seems only
fitting to use President Joe Biden’s 2022 proclamation as our last stop. In
2022, President Biden uses his proclamation to state both what the day has
come to mean and remind us all how it came to be in the first place when he
writes: “On Blind Americans Equality Day, we celebrate the essential
contributions of blind and low-vision Americans, whose talents and strength
shape every industry and every community. In 1964, President Lyndon B.
Johnson issued the first Presidential Proclamation honoring the independent
spirit of blind Americans and calling on us all to help build a more
accessible Nation.”

 

And with that, we have reached our destination. Our journey spanned six
decades, eleven presidents, sixty individual proclamations, and countless
noteworthy events and milestones throughout the course of modern American
history. But this story is far from over. We have merely reached the end of
one volume and the beginning of another. For this year, as we celebrate the
sixtieth anniversary of the first White Cane Safety Day proclamation, we
look forward to sixty more, and dream of the achievements of the organized
blind that are yet to come. We wonder how those will be forever immortalized
in the seventieth, eightieth, ninetieth, or one hundredth proclamations, and
how we will reflect on those future milestones every October 15th. Happy
Blind Americans Equality Day, Federationists! 

---------- 

 

[PHOTO CAPTION: Janna Kowalik]


Consider Becoming a Teacher of Blind and Low-Vision Students or an
Orientation and Mobility Instructor


by Janna Kowalik

 

Thankfully taken from Future Reflections, Summer 2024.

 

>From Editor Deborah Kent Stein: I hear the story from families all over the
country: “My child needs Braille instruction!” “My child needs to learn
access technology!” “We don’t have anyone to teach my child to use the long
white cane.” The need is dire, especially in rural areas. In this article,
Janna Kowalik writes about the joys and benefits of working in the field of
blindness education. Janna is a teacher of the visually impaired (TVI) and
orientation and mobility instructor based in Sacramento, California.
And—full disclosure!—she’s also my daughter. 

 

The world of special education is filled with acronyms. If you are reading
this publication, you already may know the significance of the letters TVI
(teacher of the visually impaired) and O&M (orientation and mobility).
However, you may not realize the high need for professionals in these
fields. The scarcity of certified TVIs and O&M instructors has a negative
impact on students across the country. I have worked as a TVI and O&M
instructor for the past twelve years, and I love my career. So why are
professionals in these fields so scarce? 

 

I believe that lack of awareness is a key piece of the puzzle. In this
article I hope to raise awareness of the job duties performed by TVIs and
O&M instructors and to share the many benefits of working in these fields.
Perhaps these words will reach someone who is choosing their first career,
someone considering a career change, or someone who knows somebody who would
make an amazing teacher but isn't sure where to start. 

 

A teacher of students with visual impairments (known in some training
programs as a teacher of blind students, or TBS) is a certified teacher who
has received either a bachelor’s or master’s degree in teaching with an
endorsement in visual impairments and blindness. TVIs are trained to teach
the Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC). Blind and low-vision students need
instruction in concepts and skills that will allow them to compensate for
the decreased access to information that results from their visual
impairment. 

 

These concepts and skills fall into nine areas under the Expanded Core
Curriculum: assistive technology, career education, compensatory skills
(including Braille), independent living skills, orientation and mobility,
recreation and leisure, self-determination, sensory efficiency, and social
interaction skills. Within each of these areas, TVIs address the aspects of
the ECC that relate to a student's visual impairment. For example, a TVI
teaching social interaction skills might teach a student to hold their head
up and turn toward the person speaking to them. Assistive technology within
the ECC includes the use of screen magnification, screen-reading software,
and refreshable Braille displays. A TVI teaching sensory efficiency skills
might work on the use of tactile discrimination to complete daily tasks or
on using visual scanning to locate a desired item in an array. 

 

Orientation and mobility refers to safe and efficient travel skills such as
indoor and outdoor wayfinding, mental mapping, and the use of the long white
cane. It can only be taught by a certified orientation and mobility
specialist. 

 

TVIs and O&M specialists are often itinerant, traveling from school to
school within a school district or throughout multiple districts. Some even
travel by plane or helicopter to reach students who live in remote areas!
Others work in resource rooms or at residential schools. 

 

Many districts in my area have unfilled TVI and O&M positions. In fact, some
of these positions have remained open for a year or more. I live in an urban
area, where the likelihood of filling a TVI or O&M position is relatively
high. In rural areas there may not be a qualified TVI or O&M instructor
within one hundred miles of a given school district. 

 

The nation currently faces a teacher shortage in all areas of pre-K-12
education. Districts are struggling to find and retain teachers in every
discipline. However, the scarcity of TVIs and O&M instructors is nothing
new. When I entered my graduate program in 2010, I was assured that my
employment post-graduation was all but guaranteed, especially if I were
willing to move to a less urban location. In fact, my graduate-school
tuition was fully covered by a grant aimed at bringing more professionals
into the field. I have heard employers refer to TVIs and O&M instructors as
“unicorns” because we are so scarce we might as well be mythical creatures! 

 

The need for qualified TVIs and O&M instructors has been dire for decades.
As long as positions remain unfilled, students will not have access to vital
areas of the Expanded Core Curriculum, instruction to which they are
entitled under IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). 

 

There are many benefits to working as a TVI or O&M instructor. For starters,
many universities offer significant grant-funded tuition assistance for
those enrolled in certification programs. Such assistance makes studying to
become a TVI or O&M instructor more affordable than the pursuit of other
disciplines. In addition, opportunities exist to work and be paid as a TVI
intern while completing a certification program. Some districts unable to
fill positions with certified TVIs are willing to employ students who are
enrolled in a certification program. Due to the high number of open
positions, certified TVIs and O&M instructors have the benefit of a less
stressful job hunt. Someone entering the field will likely never have to
compete against a pool of fifty other applicants for a job! 

 

Then there are the many benefits of the job itself. Most TVI and O&M
positions are itinerant, meaning that instructors travel from school to
school and often town to town throughout the day. For this reason we enjoy a
great deal more flexibility than typical classroom teachers experience.
While we must take into account the availability of our students, making
every effort to avoid pulling them from academic classes, we are granted the
freedom to set our own schedules. For example, if I live close to a certain
school, I may be able to start or end my day there to ease my commute.
Itinerant TVIs and O&M instructors usually work one-on-one with students,
which allows us to get to know our students on a level that is not always
possible in a classroom setting. Also we only have to worry about the
behavior of one student at a time, so classroom management is not usually an
issue.

 

If you believe variety is the spice of life, you'll love working as an
itinerant TVI or O&M instructor. You will have the chance to work with
students of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities. I can assure you, boredom
is never an issue in these fields! Depending on your students' needs, you
will find yourself working on anything from Braille and activities of daily
living to self-advocacy skills. You might teach all of the above to one
student over the course of a school year. You might be at a kindergarten in
the morning, encouraging Braille-letter recognition; and at a high school in
the afternoon, helping a student prepare a scholarship application. You
might spend time in a special education classroom, helping a student learn
to press a switch to choose between two recreational activities. From there
you might drop by a middle school to make sure one of your students has
access to a large print copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. The variety of tasks
within our field ensures that we are always growing as professionals, always
adding to the skills in our toolkits. 

 

The final job benefit I will discuss is the one I feel is the most
important. As teachers of students with visual impairments or orientation
and mobility instructors, we play a critical role in our students’ futures.
Throughout my years as a TVI/O&M instructor, my colleagues and I have helped
students learn Braille and assistive technology, and we have helped them
learn to navigate their school campuses without sighted assistance. We’ve
shown students how to access community resources and how to understand the
accommodations provided in their IEPs. We’ve even taught students to send
text messages using VoiceOver so they can communicate with their friends
like any other teen. If we hadn’t been there, that instruction might have
been provided piecemeal by overworked teachers in other disciplines—or those
skills might never have been taught at all. Blind and low-vision students
will always benefit from the contributions of their classroom teachers,
other service providers, and supportive family members. However, as TVIs and
O&M instructors, our roles are crucial. It is our job to prepare blind and
low-vision students to be as independent and capable as possible. A good TVI
or O&M instructor can make all the difference between student failure or
success. 

 

If you are interested in becoming a TVI or O&M instructor, please look up
accredited programs in your area. To get more information about the job,
join one of the many Facebook groups for TVIs and O&Ms. And if you are not
interested in these careers yourself, please send this article along to
anyone you know who might be. 

 

If you are already a TVI or O&M instructor, ask about participating in
career days at the high schools in your district. Help teens considering
future careers become aware of these job opportunities. Ask about providing
an in-service training for students in education courses at your local
college. Post about the shortage on social media. Any degree of awareness
might make a difference in getting future students access to qualified TVIs
and orientation and mobility instructors. 

---------- 


We Need Your Help


Attending my first National Convention in Orlando, Florida, I was
overwhelmed by not only the resources, mentorship, and national community of
students, but the love that filled every corner of the organization. The
National Federation of the Blind gave me the world. — Trisha

Blind children, students, and adults are making powerful strides in
education and leadership every day across the United States, but we need to
continue helping students like Trisha. For more than eighty years, the
National Federation of the Blind has worked to transform the dreams of
hundreds of thousands of blind people into reality. With support from
individuals like you, we can continue to provide powerful programs and
critical resources now and for decades to come. We hope you will plan to be
a part of our enduring movement by including the National Federation of the
Blind in your charitable giving and in your estate planning. It is easier
than you think.

With your help, the NFB will continue to:

*	Give blind children the gift of literacy through Braille.
*	Mentor young people like Trisha.
*	Promote independent travel by providing free, long white canes to
blind people in need.
*	Develop dynamic educational projects and programs to show blind
youth that science and math careers are within their reach.
*	Deliver hundreds of accessible newspapers and magazines to provide
blind people the essential information necessary to be actively involved in
their communities.
*	Offer aids and appliances that help seniors losing vision maintain
their independence.

Below are just a few of the many tax-deductible ways you can show your
support of the National Federation of the Blind.


LYFT Round Up


By visiting the menu, choosing donate, and selecting the National Federation
of the Blind, you commit to giving to the National Federation of the Blind
with each ride.


Vehicle Donation Program


We accept donated vehicles, including cars, trucks, boats, motorcycles, or
recreational vehicles. Just call 855-659-9314 toll-free, and a
representative can make arrangements to pick up your donation. We can also
answer any questions you have.


General Donation


General donations help support the ongoing programs of the NFB and the work
to help blind people live the lives they want. You can call 410-659-9314,
extension 2430, to give by phone. Give online with a credit card or through
the mail with check or money order. Visit our online contribution page at:
<https://nfb.org/donate> https://nfb.org/donate.


Pre-Authorized Contributions


Through the Pre-Authorized Contribution (PAC) program, supporters sustain
the efforts of the National Federation of the Blind by making recurring
monthly donations by direct withdrawal of funds from a checking account or a
charge to a credit card. To enroll, call 877-NFB-2PAC, or fill out our PAC
Donation Form  <https://www.nfb.org/pac> https://www.nfb.org/pac.


Plan to Leave a Legacy


The National Federation of the Blind legacy society, our Dream Makers
Circle, honors and recognizes the generosity and imagination of members and
special friends who have chosen to leave a legacy through a will or other
planned giving option. You can join the Dream Makers Circle in a myriad of
ways.


Percentage or Fixed Sum of Assets


You can specify that a percentage or a fixed sum of your assets or property
goes to the National Federation of the Blind in your will, trust, pension,
IRA, life insurance policy, brokerage account, or other accounts.


Payable on Death (POD) Account


You can name the National Federation of the Blind as the beneficiary on a
Payable on Death (POD) account through your bank. You can turn any checking
or savings account into a POD account. This is one of the simplest ways to
leave a legacy. The account is totally in your control during your lifetime
and you can change the beneficiary or percentage at any time with ease.


Will or Trust


If you do decide to create or revise your will, consider the National
Federation of the Blind as a partial beneficiary.

Visit our Planned Giving webpage (
<https://www.nfb.org/get-involved/ways-give/planned-giving>
https://www.nfb.org/get-involved/ways-give/planned-giving) or call
410-659-9314, extension 2422, for more information.

In 2023 our supporters helped the NFB:

*	Send 401 Braille Santa and Winter Celebration letters to blind
children, encouraging excitement for Braille literacy.
*	Distribute over six thousand canes to blind people across the United
States, empowering them to travel safely and independently throughout their
communities.
*	Deliver more than five hundred newspapers and magazines to more than
130,000 subscribers with print disabilities free of charge.
*	Give over seven hundred Braille-writing slates and styluses free of
charge to blind users.
*	Mentor 321 blind youth during our Braille Enrichment for Literacy
and Learning® Academy.
*	Award thirty scholarships each in the amount of $8,000 to blind
students.

Just imagine what we will do in 2024, and, with your help, what can be
accomplished for years to come. Together with love, hope, determination, and
your support, we will continue to transform dreams into reality.

--------- 

[PHOTO CAPTION: Geerat J. Vermeij]


It Matters What We Do, Not Who We Are


by Geerat J. Vermeij

 

>From the Editor: When I see something from Dr. Vermeij, I know with
certainty that I will be called upon to think, and when I share his
articles, I know the same is true for others. In this particular issue we
have this article, which clearly expresses the view that we put much too
much energy into identity rather than focusing on what we can do and letting
that become the positive that defines us. I think one of the purposes of the
Braille Monitor is to get people to think about divergent points of view and
then synthesizing them into something that makes each of us more successful
than we would be without the perspectives we have considered and absorbed.
Here is the article: 

 

Modern society seems obsessed with identity. Race, gender, sexual
orientation, ethnicity, and disability—they all take center stage in
defining us as individuals. At every turn, we are asked to identify
ourselves according to society’s currently fashionable categories regardless
of whether those categories can be unambiguously circumscribed. Thousands of
sociological studies, government mandates, and policies at every level of
society are founded on heterogeneous, ill-defined, and often highly fluid
categories. Worse, these categories reinforce existing prejudices and
biases. Those of us who are blind know all of this very well, yet even we
often fall prey to this preoccupation with identity.

 

In his 1963 speech, “Blindness: Handicap or Characteristic” (reprinted in
The Braille Monitor, Vol. 66, No. 6, June 2023), Kenneth Jernigan correctly
asserted that blindness is a characteristic, one of many traits that affect
a person’s life. With great clarity, he argued that blindness can be
mitigated, so that it need not and should not be considered a sign of
inability or inferiority. Indeed, a core mission of the National Federation
of the Blind is to ensure that blind individuals have the tools, as well as
the positive attitudes, to overcome the physical and social disadvantages
that come with blindness. This necessary work continues, as it should.

 

But I would go a step further. Our characteristics, including blindness, do
influence what we do and how others perceive us, but they do not define us.
What matters, it seems to me, is what we do, not who we are.

 

Society’s preoccupation with identity is destructive. It reinforces
stereotypes and prematurely determines the potential (or lack of potential)
for individual accomplishments and diminishes the fairness of how the
actions and contributions of individuals are judged.

 

My perspective on this issue derives not from social activism or advocacy,
but from my lifelong study of the economic history of the world of living
things, including our own species. Life-forms today and in the past have
managed to persevere—and in the long run to improve—in a world full of
changing challenges and opportunities. In my latest book The Evolution of
Power: A New Understanding of the History of Life (Princeton University
Press, 2023), I explore the premise that, like humans, all other forms of
life have the ability to change and adapt to their surroundings to the
extent that their power (the rate at which energy and material resources are
acquired and deployed) allows. Although their station in the web of life is
strongly affected by this power, it is the actions of living things that
matter. By itself, power or energy, like money, means nothing. They become
useful only when they are deployed to do something. In other words,
characteristics in the abstract tell us nothing about what we do.

 

A shift in emphasis away from identity toward accomplishment would represent
a healthy and refreshing reorientation in how we and others see ourselves.
What can we do with the appropriate physical and educational tools? Isn’t it
better to be evaluated on what we have done or are doing than to be
classified according to preconceived, often socially loaded, categories
based on characteristics in isolation? Our accomplishments and actions are
far more diverse than our socially prescribed characteristics, and it is
this diversity of doing that describes the richness of the human enterprise.

---------- 

 

[PHOTO CAPTION: John Paré]

[PHOTO CAPTION: Jeff Kaloc]

[PHOTO CAPTION: Justin Young]

[PHOTO CAPTION: Jesse Shirek]

 


We Belong: A Report on Our Collective Progress toward Equality in America
and Beyond


by the Advocacy and Policy Team

 

>From the Editor: Here are the words President Riccobono used to introduce
our Advocacy and Policy Team:

 

PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: All right. Our next presentation to continue hearing
from our fine Federation staff says it all in two words: “We belong.” Here
to talk about our collective progress toward equality in society, we have
our Advocacy and Policy Group. I’m sure that they will tell you they’re only
part of the group because another significant part of it is everybody else
sitting in this room and folks who are listening virtually. But these are
the ones who day to day are tracking, keeping up on things, helping to
create a strategy, along with the board of directors, finding opportunities
for us. I sometimes say that John Paré’s job is to make sure that no
conversation in Washington, DC, happens without someone saying National
Federation of the Blind when what is talked about might impact blind people.
He does a great job at that, along with the other members of our group who
all bring different talents to the work, and they’re all supported by a
number of great folks. So, I’ll let John Paré introduce the rest of them.
Here in what is now his seventeenth year as our executive director for
advocacy and policy, John Paré!

 

JOHN: Thank you! On July 26, 2010, Anil Lewis and I, along with hundreds of
our friends with disabilities, were on the South Lawn of the White House. We
were there to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Americans with
Disabilities Act and to witness President Obama sign the Americans with
Disabilities Act Website and Software Application draft regulation.

 

While the Americans with Disabilities Act requires websites and applications
to be accessible, many public and private entities were saying that the law
is not clear on exactly what this means. The National Federation of the
Blind carefully reviewed the document, did research, and drawing on our
lived experiences submitted comments reflecting the voice of the organized
blind.

 

Nearly six years later, instead of proceeding to a Notice of Proposed
Rulemaking, the typical next step in the regulatory process, the Department
of Justice asked over 120 questions in what amounted to a lengthy
questionnaire.

 

Then on December 26, 2017, the Department of Justice suddenly announced that
they were stopping all work on the website accessibility regulation.
[Booing] We were shocked. We were incredulous. We were furious.

 

While the law is still on our side, with websites and applications becoming
more and more integrated into everyday life, we knew that regulatory clarity
was important.

 

Over the next several years, we broadened our reach, increased the
intensity, and doubled down on our advocacy. On February 28, 2022, the
National Federation of the Blind, along with over 180 other disability
groups wrote the United States assistant attorney general for civil rights,
urging her to move forward on the website accessibility regulation. Then, at
our 2023 convention in Houston, we passed resolution 2023-01 demanding that
the DOJ move forward on the regulation.

 

One month later, on August 4, the Department of Justice released the
long-awaited ADA website Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. While there were
many regulatory details which we agreed with, there were also seven
exceptions which would not require content to be accessible. There were
seven exceptions, two especially pernicious exceptions: one related to
education for K-12 students, and one related to education for students in
higher education.

 

We are sick and tired of blind students not having accessible instructional
material at the same time as their sighted peers! [Cheers and applause] We
prepared over twenty pages of well-documented, persuasive arguments urging
the Department of Justice to eliminate the seven exceptions, especially the
two related to education.

 

On April 24, just a few months ago, the Department of Justice released the
ADA Website Accessibility final regulation. The two educational exceptions
had been removed, and the remaining five exceptions had been brought
substantially in line with the existing statutory principles of undue burden
and fundamental alteration. It was our relentless determination that refused
to quit after even more than a decade of delays, denials, and withdrawals.
This regulation is a substantial step in the right direction won by the
organized blind.

 

While it only covers state and local governments, we will apply the same
relentless determination to advocate for regulations applicable to places of
public accommodation. [Applause]

 

And to those still developing inaccessible websites, we want to be clear:
the National Federation of the Blind will never stop advocating until all
websites are fully accessible to all blind Americans.

 

Scott White is responsible for our NFB NEWSLINE® service. NFB-NEWSLINE is
the largest, most effective audio newspaper service available for the blind
anywhere in the world. It is available over the phone, the web, the Victor
Reader Stream, the NLS Digital Talking Book player, the Amazon Echo, and the
iOS app.

 

We also are working on an Android app which should be available later this
year. We have 595 publications, and some portion of NFB-NEWSLINE is accessed
every 1.85 seconds. Recent additions include Midwest Living, Chicago
Defender, Time for Kids, Rapid City Journal, and the Colorado Springs Indie.

 

We have television listings for every cable and satellite provider,
seven-day weather forecast, emergency alerts, and job listings. If you don't
already use NFB-NEWSLINE, I urge you to sign up. 

 

Sean Seward is our manager of the Independence Market. We have over four
hundred items in our catalog, including white canes, Braille and audio
watches, kitchen aids, measuring tools, and games. Some our most popular
items include the Braille cell model fidget, our tactile Braille playing
cards, our atomic talking watch with buckle band, and our regulation-size
soccer ball with rattles. You can also get NFB logoed hats, shirts, and
jackets. You can order items by calling our main number, and you soon will
be able to order items using our new e-commerce system. 

 

Sanho Steele-Louchart is our legal programs coordinator. Over the past year
we have assisted with over 450 advocacy matters in the areas of parental
rights, K-12 and higher education, test taking, employment, physical and
digital accessibility, and social security.

 

We intend to fully participate in all aspects of society, and our advocacy
work and legal work will help ensure that we are able to live the lives that
we want.

 

Now, over to Jeff!

 

JEFF KALOC: Thank you, John. The Website and Software Application
Accessibility Act, H.R. 5813 and S. 2984 was introduced in the House of
Representatives by Congressman John Sarbanes from Maryland and in the Senate
by Senator Tammy Duckworth from Illinois. Over the span of the 118th
Congress, this bill gathered thirty-six cosponsors in the House and five in
the Senate. This legislation is critical to making sure websites and apps
are accessible by creating a statutory definition for accessibility, holding
third-party vendors accountable, and providing Technical Assistance Centers
to help businesses understand and comply with accessibility requirements.

 

The National Federation of the Blind will never stop fighting until all
websites and apps are fully accessible to all blind Americans. [Applause]

 

High access technology prices have placed unrealistic burdens on those in
search of employment. Many of these devices cost more than $4,000 per
device, which is why the Access Technology Affordability Act is so
imperative. The Access Technology Affordability Act, H.R. 3702 and S. 1467
was introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Mike Kelly
from Pennsylvania and in the Senate by Senator Benjamin Cardin from
Maryland. It currently has ninety-one cosponsors in the House and eighteen
cosponsors in the Senate. Provisions in the bill will allow blind Americans
purchasing access technology devices to utilize a $2,000 refundable tax
credit. This bill will put more access technology in the hands of blind
people, increase employment opportunities, and ensure independent living for
blind Americans. The National Federation of the Blind will never stop
working until this bill is signed into law. [Applause]

 

This is an election year, and ensuring voting is conducted both privately
and independently is crucial to free and fair elections. Having accessible
ballot marking devices or accessible remote options is critical to make
certain that blind and low-vision voters can express their voice.

 

Thirty-four states plus the District of Columbia permit electronic ballot
delivery, allowing blind and print-disabled Americans to mark their ballot
accessibly and return their ballot. Thirteen states allow electronic ballot
delivery and return, thereby allowing a blind or print-disabled voter to
mark, cast, and verify their ballot from the comfort of their home. Those
states are Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine,
Massachusetts, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Utah, and
West Virginia.

 

We have always understood that remote voting needs to be fully non-visually
accessible. It didn’t take a pandemic and countless natural disasters for us
to recognize the benefits. This process provides full accessibility as it
does not require the voter to print and sign a hand-marked paper ballot.

 

While we have made great progress in the area of website accessibility, the
ability to purchase access technology, and accessible voting, there is still
work to be done.

 

None of this is possible if we do not organize, strategize, and mobilize to
ensure that our voices are heard by those in power. And with that, now over
to Justin. [Applause]

 

JUSTIN YOUNG: Thank you, Jeff. We continue to make great progress on the
Medical Device Nonvisual Accessibility Act in the 118th Congress. In the
House of Representatives, H.R. 1328 currently has eighty-four cosponsors,
and some notable names include representatives Brian Fitzpatrick from
Pennsylvania and Debbie Dingle from Michigan, who serve as the cochairs of
the bipartisan Congressional Disability Caucus.

 

On January 18, 2024, the Medical Device Nonvisual Accessibility Act was
introduced in the Senate as S. 3621 by Senators Maggie Hassan from New
Hampshire and Mike Braun from Indiana. We need to keep up the effort to
build more bipartisan support, ensuring these bills both in the House and
the Senate one day soon will get passed. [Applause]

 

As it relates to accessible prescription labeling, in 2024, the governors of
Virginia, Minnesota, and Colorado signed bills into law requiring the state
board of pharmacies to begin the regulatory process. The states of Nevada,
Oregon, and Tennessee have concluded the regulatory process and have fully
implemented their bills on this topic.

 

It is anticipated the State of Washington's Board of Pharmacy will issue
their rules by the end of this year.

 

Through our advocacy, we will make it possible for blind people to safely,
effectively, and accessibly use medical devices and correctly identify our
medication. [Applause]

 

We continue to approach the topic of ending subminimum wage with a
two-pronged approach. At the federal level we continue to advocate for the
passage of the Transformation to Competitive Integrated Employment Act, H.R.
1263 and S. 533. Currently, H.R. 1263 has thirty-three cosponsors, and S.
533 has three cosponsors.

 

During the week of May 20, 2024, the National Federation of the Blind and
SourceAmerica, an organization dedicated to increasing employment for people
with disabilities, sent a joint letter to the United States Congress urging
further support for these bills.

 

At the state level, there are twenty-one states plus Washington, DC, and
Puerto Rico that have either completely eliminated or reduced the payment of
subminimum wages. [Applause] In 2024, the states of Kansas and Florida
passed laws that we believe will reduce the numbers of people with
disabilities being paid subminimum wages. It is time this discriminatory
employment practice once and for all be eliminated. [Applause]

 

This year, the National Federation of the Blind strongly advocated for
changes in the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act. These
include better training for airline staff on how to interact with blind
passengers, improving the ability to nonvisually access the in-flight
entertainment features, and being able to fly with our guide dogs without
having to provide documentation related to our guide dogs for every single
flight.

 

The FAA Reauthorization Act instructs the United States Department of
Transportation to create a Known Traveler Number system for service animal
users, thereby eliminating the need for these burdensome forms. We deserve
the right to fly with our canes and our guide dogs everywhere and anywhere
we please without interference from airline staff. [Cheers and applause]

 

We will continue to advocate for accessible use of medical devices,
accessible prescription drug labeling, the right to earn a fair wage, and
the right to travel independently, ensuring we may live the lives we want,
being productive members of society.

 

And with that, over to Jesse.

 

JESSE SHIREK: Thank you, Justin. On January 30, 2024, at the Washington
Seminar Congressional Reception, Representative Pete Sessions from Texas
made a promise. He pledged to introduce the Blind Americans Return to Work
Act to Congress. And you know what—he’s kept that promise! [Applause] On
June 28, 2024, H.R. 8878 was introduced by Congressman Sessions with lead
cosponsor Kweisi Mfume from Maryland.

 

Now that we, an army of the Federation advocates have a bill number to fight
for, we will change our collective future. In case you’re not aware of the
problem, let me introduce you to David, a fellow Federationist from Wabasha,
Minnesota. David’s journey reflects the struggles faced by many of us.
Raised on a Texas cattle ranch, David later joined the Navy, ready to defend
our country during the Iran hostage crisis. An honorable discharge led him
to work in the Texas oil fields, where he soon learned to drive commercial
trucks delivering construction materials.

 

But he didn’t know what his future had in store. A sudden accident left
David blind. He didn’t give up. He received SSDI and acquired blindness
skills training at BLIND Incorporated. His dedication led him to work at the
Center, even volunteering during the Summer Buddies Program with blind
youth.

 

Yet, the earnings cliff loomed over him. Earning more than $1,640 in 2009
would have cost him his entire benefits check, slicing his income in half.
In 2017, David entered the Randolph-Sheppard Vending program, excited about
his future in becoming a blind business owner. In 2020, the pandemic forced
the closure of his vending stand, leaving him without income. He lost his
house, and now, on the brink of retirement, he lives benefit check to
benefit check. David’s story is not unique. Unfortunately, thousands of us
face the same struggle. We are not mere numbers. We are human beings with
our own lived experiences that deserve to be shared.

 

It is time we transform the earnings cliff into a true work incentive
fostering financial security for all blind Americans. [Applause] 

 

Unfortunately, the earnings cliff is not the only SSDI issue in need of a
solution. I want to draw your attention to the We Can’t Wait Act, S. 4129
sponsored by Senator Debbie Stabenow from Michigan and lead cosponsor Susan
Collins from Maine. Current law mandates that five months after the first
full month after the beneficiary has been determined eligible for SSDI, they
will receive their first benefit payment. This bill would give applicants
the option not to wait and receive their benefit checks in exchange for a
6.1 percent reduction in total benefits. We believe the beneficiaries should
have the choice to have financial security when it is needed most. 

 

The Autonomous Vehicles Accessibility Act, H.R. 7126, sponsored by
Congressman Greg Stanton of Arizona and lead cosponsor Brian Mast from
Florida, protects the rights of all blind Americans. It ensures that
eyesight is not a requirement to use fully autonomous vehicles. No driver’s
license should be a barrier. We thought we won this battle long ago, but on
February 9, 2024, we learned of H.B. 1447, a bill in the Maryland General
Assembly threatened to strip away a fully autonomous vehicle technology by
mandating a licensed driver behind the wheel of every autonomous vehicle in
Maryland. Can you imagine in the backyard of the National Federation of the
Blind, the home of our headquarters, our dreams were threatened. And how did
we respond? We did not hesitate for one second. [Applause] We rallied our
members and took action. Led by the fierce testimony of our own Federation
affiliate President Ronza Othman, [Cheers and applause] we killed this bill
in committee.

 

Now, let’s move together as we did in Maryland and fight for the Autonomous
Vehicles Accessibility Act to ensure that we will always be in the driver's
seat of our future.

 

Thank you. Back to you, John.

 

JOHN: Thank you Jeff, Justin, and Jesse. As you can see, we have a strong
government affairs team with strong specialists in this area. I want to
emphasize what President Riccobono said: our government affairs team
consists of everybody in this room. It’s the big “we.” It’s we who are doing
the collective action, that is making the progress over the past year, and
we’re going to work even harder together as a team to do even more in the
next twelve months, so we have more to report at our next convention.

 

So, for all of us, this is our report. Thank you, President Riccobono.
[Cheers and applause]

 

PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: Let’s hear it for “We Belong!”

 

---------- 


Another Extraordinary Experience at National Convention: A Journey Made for
Two


by Shelbi Felter

 

>From the Editor: Each year we at the Monitor encourage and sometimes beg for
folks to write about their first experience at convention. Our thanks to
Shelbi for this article and her advice to guide dog users. Here is what she
says:

 

As the excitement of convention started to build, the first task was to
pack. My black labrador guide dog, Kristen, and I usually share a large,
checked suitcase, with packing cubes. This is my sixth national convention,
and fourth with Kristen. With all the travel that we’ve done, I’ve learned
it is much easier when Kristen has her own packing cube. In separate plastic
bags, I was able to pack all of her food, her vitamins, her medication for
the month, lots of poop bags, her light-up collar, Nylabones, stuffies,
teeth-cleaning wipes, ear wipes, and wipes for her body. Yes, it is a lot,
but it is like traveling with a baby. To keep Kristen cool, we used the
Ruffwear cooling vest and Musher’s Secret. My girl does not like wearing
booties, but Musher’s Secret protects the bottom of her paws throughout the
day. I made sure we took lots of water breaks, with her collapsable bowl,
and took advantage of air conditioning and shade as much as possible. I also
packed a lightweight rain jacket for her, but we did not use it. Some items
were definitely not essential, but my girl loves being dressed, so I also
packed her princess dress, Minnie ears, Fourth of July dress, and dress for
banquet.

 

This year, we took advantage of being in Orlando and began our trip five
days before convention with a visit to Disneyworld. Kristen did amazing
guiding around the theme parks. Although she does love to work,
playtime—especially in these types of environments—is crucial. We roomed
with my best friend, Lindsay, and her guide dog, Eve. This was great, since
the dogs were able to play during their time off throughout the entire trip.

 

For me and Kristen to be successful and have less stress, if possible, we
try to get to the convention hotel at least a day before everything starts.
This allows us to walk around in a stress-free environment and have her
start to locate a few of the important places we will be going throughout
the week. Kristen’s favorite thing, while working and not, is targeting. For
those who don’t know, targeting is when you task the dog with finding
something. It can be as simple as an elevator button or the door to outside.
The convention and hotel environment are full of constant targeting tasks.
Although Kristen was working, it was also like a fun game for her. As the
week went on, she started to memorize our routes to the hotel room, to the
dog relief areas outside, to the escalators and elevators, to the meeting
rooms, and to the microwave in the hotel lobby. Kristen even became adept at
finding familiar friends in crowds.

 

Convention is very, very busy and packed with excitement, but it can also be
very stressful. It is very important to be in tune with your dog and
recognize their stress responses and how to fix them. This could mean
knowing the best places to put them during a meeting, such as under the
chair, so that way they are protected more from people walking by and canes.
It is important to know your own stress levels as well. There were many
times throughout convention when Kristen and I took a break from the large
crowd and watched a couple of the meetings from our room on Zoom. Sadly,
this did cause us to miss a door prize, but ultimately, I think it helped
keep both of us sane. 

 

We attended many meetings and met with many friends, old and new. I am truly
grateful to have attended another convention with my amazing girl by my
side. I also was elected as a board member for the National Organization of
Blind Educators. This is an extreme honor; during the school year, Kristen
and I work with elementary students with special needs. We also had the
extreme honor at the National Association of Guide Dog Users business
meeting of reading the NFB Pledge. This was amazing, since this year we
celebrate a huge milestone anniversary, the fiftieth, of our pledge.

 

As always, this year’s convention flew by and created so many lasting
memories. I cannot wait until we are all back together again next year, my
guide dog by my side, in New Orleans!

---------- 

 


Statement of ABA President Mary Smith


 

>From the Associate Editor: This is a statement issued by the president of
the American Bar Association (ABA) to celebrate Disability Pride Month,
which was observed in July. We received the statement too late for inclusion
in earlier issues of this magazine. We are pleased to publish it now,
however, because it demonstrates that we have allies in the legal community
and expresses their solidarity with our cause. This is no accident or
coincidence: Members of the legal profession who are also Federation
leaders, such as the late Scott C. LaBarre and Denise Avant, have worked
hard within the ABA to foster inclusion of blind and disabled law students
and lawyers and awareness of the barriers faced by our community. This
statement also reminds us that members of our Federation family may face
other, less visible disabilities in addition to blindness, along with other
intersecting challenges. Here is what the ABA president had to say:

 

CHICAGO, July 9, 2024 – The American Bar Association is proud to recognize
Disability Pride Month this July in celebration of the immense resilience,
creativity, and contributions of individuals with disabilities. This month
marks thirty-four years since the 1990 enactment of the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA), a seminal piece of civil rights legislation that
fundamentally redefined the landscape of accessibility and inclusion in
America. By protecting against discrimination and mandating equal
opportunities in employment, public accommodations, and government services,
the ADA has been instrumental in shaping a more equitable society.

 

Disability Pride Month also challenges us to confront deep-seated prejudices
that undermine the value of individuals with disabilities, while also
highlighting the substantial barriers that persist towards achieving true
equality. Approximately one in four Americans navigate life with a
disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Among these, ten percent grapple with invisible disabilities such as chronic
pain, mental health disorders and neurological differences that can
profoundly affect daily life and interactions. Additionally, the recent
COVID-19 pandemic has brought challenges like long COVID into focus,
emphasizing the urgent need for evolving policies and practices.

Many individuals with disabilities continue to face significant obstacles in
accessing suitable employment, adequate health care, and accessible housing,
as well as enduring discriminatory or harmful attitudes that undervalue
their capabilities and worth. These challenges are often intensified for
disabled individuals who are also people of color or members of the LGBTQ+
community, facing multiple layers of discrimination.

 

At the American Bar Association, we are driven to change this narrative
while celebrating the diverse abilities that enrich our collective
community. Our Commission on Disability Rights leads the charge in
advocating for accessibility and inclusion. While we focus on enhancing
opportunities for disabled lawyers, our initiatives also tackle
disability-related public policy and law, promoting adaptive and inclusive
policies that foster full participation for all individuals with
disabilities. We are committed to ensuring that everyone can engage with the
legal system and society at large without hindrance to fully realize their
potential.

 

This Disability Pride Month, we invite the legal community to celebrate the
strides and contributions of disabled individuals and engage deeply with the
issues they still face. Join us in championing the #BeCounted campaign,
which encourages individuals to map their presence as a bold statement of
pride and a call for greater awareness and amplified visibility, and to
cultivate a culture of respect and understanding.

 

The quest for comprehensive accessibility for disabled persons extends
beyond physical spaces and encompasses the need for societal shifts to fully
embrace and integrate individuals with disabilities into every aspect of
public and professional life. Together, we can forge a path toward a truly
inclusive society where disability is recognized not as a deficit but as an
integral part of human diversity.

 

The ABA is the largest voluntary association of lawyers in the world. As the
national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the
administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges
in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education,
and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance
of the rule of law. Follow the latest ABA news at
<http://www.americanbar.org/news> www.americanbar.org/news and on X
(formerly Twitter) @ABANews.

 

---------- 

[PHOTO CAPTION: Kristen Clarke]


Closing the Door on Discrimination: Championing the Blind in Society Through
Civil Rights Protections at the Department of Justice


by Kristen Clarke

 

>From the Editor: This is the best presentation I’ve ever heard from the
Department of Justice. To those who cynically ask whether government has a
place in our lives, I suggest this begins to answer that question. Here is
what President Riccobono said in introducing Ms. Clarke:

 

This speaker today is the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the
US Department of Justice. In this role she leads the Justice Department’s
broad federal civil rights enforcement work on behalf of all Americans. The
assistant attorney general is a lifelong civil rights champion. As a lawyer,
she has worked very hard on a number of fronts to ensure that all people
have their equal rights protected, and she's helped to expand those rights
in many places.

 

I could read to you her extensive biography. I have to say it made me
wonder—maybe I need to work a little harder. Her accomplishments are
incredible in terms of what she has done to knock down the barriers,
eliminate discrimination, and close the door on discriminatory practices.
So, the blind have benefited from her work. [Applause] She speaks and writes
widely about issues of race and law and justice. You can find her name in
all sorts of places, and she is now one of the primary people at the
Department of Justice working on using that government tool to expand the
equal participation of blind people in society, as well as many others.

 

Her work directly impacts us. How do we know? Well, amongst her notable
qualifications, most recently she was the lead champion for getting website
regulations under Title II out the door. [Applause] So I’m really pleased to
welcome to our stage for the first time but hopefully not the last time
ever, in her capacity at the United States Department of Justice, please
welcome the Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke.

 

KRISTEN CLARKE: Good afternoon. It is great to be here. I want to first
start off by thanking President Riccobono for that very gracious
introduction and for the honor of being with you all today. I want to note
at the outset, again, my name is Kristen Clarke. I’m the assistant attorney
general for the Civil Rights Division at the United States Department of
Justice. I’m a five-foot four Black woman wearing a navy suit.

 

I just want to take a moment to acknowledge my colleagues who are with me:
the extraordinary Jennifer Mathis, a long-time disability rights advocate,
and Adam Lewis, a trial attorney at the Justice Department as well.
[Applause] I just also want to take a point of personal privilege to
acknowledge how exciting it is to share a stage today with Judge David Tatel
whose career encompasses a wide range of civil rights issues and whose
personal experiences and extraordinary contributions on the bench model
courage and perseverance for this community.

 

I’m so thrilled to be here with you today during the National Federation of
the Blind’s national convention to speak about the work of the US Department
of Justice and to talk about how we are working to vindicate the rights of
blind people and of other people with disabilities.

 

The Federation’s national convention is a marquee event for the disability
rights and civil rights community every year. But this year in particular,
we have some especially noteworthy achievements to celebrate, even as we
recommit ourselves to the work that still lies ahead.

 

Two years ago, the participants at this convention adopted a resolution
urging the federal government to take action to ensure the accessibility of
websites and mobile applications. That resolution explained why the need for
federal action was so critical. It noted how essential the internet has
become in the lives of most Americans, citing, for example, that 85 percent
of American adults visit the internet at least once a day, and that the
digital economy alone accounts for nearly 10 percent of the United States
gross domestic product. The resolution explained that despite the importance
of digital spaces, they too often are inaccessible to blind people and
others with disabilities. It cited studies which have found that
accessibility barriers existed in more than 97 percent of websites, and it
noted that these barriers prevented blind people and others with
disabilities from fully participating in the mainstream of American
economic, cultural, and political life.

 

Four months earlier in March ‘22, 181 disability rights and civil rights
organizations, and that included you all, the NFB; the American Council of
the Blind; the American Foundation for the Blind; and the National
Disability Rights Network sent the Justice Department a letter urging us to
finalize a rule on web and mobile application accessibility. We also heard
loud and clear the disability community’s call for a web rule at our
quarterly meetings with national disability groups.

 

At the Civil Rights Division, we listened. We too had been grappling with
the need for a technical standard about the ADA’s web accessibility
requirements as we sought to enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act’s
protections in the digital world. We also knew this problem was growing
increasingly acute as the internet became a more pervasive and essential
part of all of our lives.

 

So, in the fall of 2022, we announced that we would be issuing proposed
regulations under Title II of the ADA, setting forth specific requirements
for web and mobile app accessibility for state and local government
entities. Then, in the summer of 2023, we did exactly that.

 

I am not going to recount every administrative and bureaucratic hurdle that
we encountered during the rulemaking process for you here today. If I did
that, we’d probably have to add another two or three days to this convention
and start distributing espressos and energy drinks. What I will say, though,
is that no part of the federal rulemaking process is easy, and web
accessibility is a particularly difficult field to promulgate regulations in
because the slow-moving rulemaking process is not a natural fit with the
rapidly evolving digital landscape. 

 

We overcame these challenges because we had a team of tireless individuals
working day and night on this, especially in our disability rights section.
They were committed to getting the job done and doing it in the best way
possible. These folks devoted weeks, months, and in some cases years of
their life to analyzing and thinking through every wrinkle of the proposed
regulation. They also were deeply committed to hearing from people with
disabilities and to ensuring that the rule was genuinely responsive to the
concerns that prompted the call for action.

 

We received public comments from a wide variety of stakeholders that
included advocacy groups, state and local government entities, trade groups,
and people with disabilities. Some of the public comments hammered home why
the need for the rule was so critical. One commenter noted that the COVID-19
pandemic had reinforced just how dependent we are as individuals, a nation,
and humanity on becoming and staying connected to and with each other and
our government via the internet. Our education, physical, and mental health,
sense of self, safety, security, life, liberties, and pursuit of happiness
will increasingly be determined by whether or not we have ready, ubiquitous
access to all digital content. [Applause] That same commenter noted that if
people with disabilities are effectively barred from accessing websites and
apps and exercising the personal agency that comes from doing so, their
lives, opportunities, and futures will be even more limited, segregated, and
marginalized.

 

Another commenter emphasized that, “As blind and visually impaired adults,
we live just as independent, productive, and self-sufficient as anyone
would. We use websites and mobile applications with screen readers on our
computers and smart devices to complete any number of daily tasks, including
banking; budgeting; shopping; scheduling rides; tracking health records such
as vitals, glucose, water intake, and medication management; researching
school assignments; career exploration; filling out paperwork; and staying
connected to loved ones. Our privacy, confidentiality, and livelihoods
depend on full unrestricted accessibility of any website and mobile app
available to anyone else.” [Applause]

 

Our team read every single one of these comments, and we adjusted the final
rule to respond to those comments and to balance the concerns of the diverse
group of stakeholders that weighed in. At the same time the team deftly
worked to navigate the substantive and logistical hurdles that are part of
every federal rulemaking process. Some of our team members who had been part
of the 2010 rulemaking process knew all too well that a final rule was not
guaranteed until it was signed by Attorney General Merrick Garland and
codified in the Federal Register. It was thus with great joy that we crossed
that finish line earlier this year. 

 

On Wednesday, April 24, the Federal Register published the department’s
final rule under Title II of the ADA. [Applause] This landmark and historic
rule will help ensure that the web content and mobile apps of state and
local governments are accessible to people with disabilities. It is
difficult to overstate the importance of this rule. Although the ADA has
always required public entities to ensure that people with disabilities can
access all of an entity's services and programs and activities, the initial
ADA regulation didn’t include any specific standards for web accessibility,
because the web was at its infancy when the ADA was passed. And as the NFB’s
2022 resolution made clear, and as we heard so often over the years from so
many members of the public, the lack of a technical standard in this area
created widespread barriers for people with disabilities to access state and
local government websites and apps. The impact of these barriers has only
grown as state and local governments have moved more of their services,
programs, and activities online. It’s now commonplace to use websites and
apps to apply for government benefits, register to vote, access course
materials, renew government-issued IDs, file taxes, pay fines, obtain
up-to-date health and safety resources, request copies of vital records,
access mass transit schedules, and so much more. When people with
disabilities are excluded from state and local government websites and
mobile apps, it can be hard or impossible for them to access these and other
critical services. We know this rule will help correct that injustice and
will advance the ADA’s promise of full and equal participation in society
for people with disabilities. It’s a huge step forward towards an America
where people with disabilities are fully included in all spaces, regardless
of whether the space is physical or digital. [Applause]

 

Now, I talked at length about our web rule and with good reason; it is an
historic milestone. But the web rule is just part of the work that we do
every day in this space. Web accessibility has been a division priority for
many years. Even before enactment of the rule, the Justice Department had
long maintained that the ADA applied to web content, and we repeatedly used
our enforcement authority to ensure that people with disabilities had access
to goods, services, programs, and activities that governments were making
available online.

 

In recent years in particular, we have pursued enforcement actions in other
critical areas, including voting, education, and healthcare. In the area of
voting, just last month, we secured settlement agreements with several
counties in Texas whose election websites were inaccessible for people with
vision or manual disabilities. [Applause] A timely issue. These election
websites provide essential information about how to vote, about registering
to vote, identification requirements, early voting, and specific information
for people with disabilities. Under the settlement agreements, these
counties agreed to make all future and existing online content accessible,
and they will adopt new policies and training for personnel, hire
independent auditors to evaluate the accessibility of their sites, and
solicit feedback from the community.

 

Just one day after announcing those agreements in Texas, we issued findings
that Alaska violated the ADA by maintaining an inaccessible elections
website. As in Texas, we found that voters with disabilities faced barriers
to obtaining key information on Alaska’s election websites, including voter
registration forms, candidate statements, voting dates, and polling site
locations. This work is motivated by a simple principle: people with
disabilities must be able to exercise their voice in our democracy.
[Applause]

 

Now, public education in the United States is another area where the
importance of the internet is ever increasing. Many public schools at all
levels now offer programs and instruction online. Many public colleges and
universities rely heavily on websites and other online technologies in the
application process for prospective students, for housing eligibility and
on-campus living assignments, for course registration and course content,
and for a wide variety of administrative and logistical functions in which
students must participate. Sadly, in many public elementary and secondary
school settings, teachers and administrators communicate via the web with
parents and students about grades, assignments, schedule changes, and safety
alerts, sadly on platforms that are not accessible. When these online tools
and content are inaccessible, it denies students and parents with
disabilities an equal opportunity to participate in and benefit from
educational programming. We are working to address this injustice.
[Applause]

 

In 2022 we secured a consent decree with the University of California at
Berkeley to resolve allegations that the school violated Title II by failing
to make online content accessible to people with hearing, vision, and manual
disabilities. The decree requires UC Berkeley to make the vast majority of
its existing online content accessible, including a large collection of
online courses, videos, and podcasts and to make all of its future online
content accessible going forward. The school is also revising its policies,
training relevant personnel, conducting accessibility testing, hiring an
independent auditor, and more.

 

We followed that decree and amplified its impact by joining with the US
Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to issue a Dear Colleague
Letter in May of last year, reminding every college and university and
postsecondary institution in our country about their obligations under the
ADA and under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. We do this work because
blind people and people with disabilities deserve full and equal access to
educational opportunity in our country, period. [Applause]

 

Now, healthcare is another area of American life that is increasingly moving
online. It’s also an area where accessibility barriers can be a matter of
life and death. In 2021 and 2022, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we
reached settlement agreements with CVS, Rite Aid, Kroger, Hy Vee, and Meijer
to eliminate barriers that prevented people with disabilities from
effectively using those companies’ websites to book COVID-19 vaccine
appointments. CVS, which is the country's largest retail pharmacy with
10,000 locations, had a COVID-19 registration portal that people using
screen readers could not access. At the beginning of the scheduling process,
the portal did not read aloud the types of vaccine appointments offered, and
on the page where users were meant to pick an appointment time, screen
reader users were told that all available times were checked, even when they
made no selection.

 

At a time when the pandemic was raging across our country and many people
with disabilities had underlying conditions placing them at higher risk of
COVID infection or complication, it’s not hard to understand how barriers to
vaccination like these were tremendously harmful. Together with the
Department of Health and Human Services, in 2022 we issued guidance on
non-discrimination in telehealth to explain the protections that laws like
the ADA, Section 504, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, along
with the Affordable Care Act provide. We explained how those laws apply to
people who are blind or low-vision. The guidance is designed to help
healthcare providers understand their obligations and empower patients by
ensuring that they know their rights under federal law.

 

In America we deserve a healthcare system that treats people who are blind
and low-vision with the full dignity and respect they deserve. [Applause]
Most recently, in January of this year, we secured a settlement with Service
Oklahoma to resolve findings that the state agency's mobile ID application
was inaccessible. The app required users to take pictures of the front and
back of their IDs and to take pictures of themselves by connecting dots that
appear on the screen using only head and eye movements. Both tasks were
difficult or impossible for blind people to complete because they received
no verbal feedback.

 

In 2022 we reached an agreement with the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit
District in Illinois to resolve allegations that the district’s website and
mobile apps, which allow users to plan trips and check arrival times and
find fair information, were inaccessible to users with vision and manual
impairments—just a snapshot of some of the broader work that we're doing to
ensure that state and local governments make sure their websites and apps
are accessible. [Applause]

 

Lastly, I have focused thus far on our enforcement work related to web
accessibility, but I would be remiss if I didn’t note that this is just a
part of the Justice Department’s broader work to vindicate the rights of
people who are blind or low-vision. One area where we are deeply engaged,
which coincidentally was also the subject of a resolution at the 2022 NFB
National Convention, is in protecting the rights of blind people in our
nation’s jails and prisons. The NFB’s 2022 resolution on this topic rightly
noted that blind people held in jails and prisons throughout the country
face disparate and discriminatory treatment that included being denied
accommodations and effective communication and being denied equal access to
training and work programs. Last November we secured a settlement agreement
with the Arizona State Prison System to address findings that state prisons
discriminated against people who are blind or low-vision. We found that
Arizona prisons, which house more than 35,000 people, failed to reasonably
modify their policies or provide auxiliary aids and services such as Braille
materials and displays, audio recordings and screen reader software to
ensure that people who are blind or low-vision could communicate effectively
while incarcerated. [Applause] Thank you, and where is Arizona? [cheering]
All right! The state also failed to provide accessible processes to request
accommodations or file disability-related complaints. They also overrelied
on other incarcerated people to help those who are blind or low-vision
without properly training or supervising those providing help. Under our
agreement, Arizona is adopting system-wide reforms to address our findings
and to correct and prevent future discrimination. [Applause]

 

We are also engaged in robust efforts to address physical accessibility
issues affecting people who are blind or low-vision. Most notably, in 2021,
we intervened in a lawsuit in Chicago, the third largest city in the United
States—where is Illinois? [Cheers] All right—alleging that the city failed
to provide people who are blind, low-vision, or deafblind with equal access
to pedestrian signal information at intersections. While Chicago currently
provides sighted pedestrians visual crossing signals at nearly 2,800
intersections, we found that fewer than 1 percent of those were equipped
with accessible pedestrian signals for people who are blind or low-vision.
We can't tolerate this in our country today. 

 

In March of last year, the federal court granted summary judgment in our
favor and held Chicago liable for violating the ADA and Section 504. Now, we
know that our work on all these fronts is far from done, and we appreciate
the importance of addressing the intersectionality of disability and race,
gender, sexuality, and classes of people who experience overlapping forms of
discrimination and face unique challenges, and we bring that lens to the
work every day. With regard to web access, we know that despite enactment of
our Title II web rule, there's still much to do to educate public entities
and other members of the public about the rule’s requirements and to
vigorously enforce the law so that the increased clarity it provides results
in increased compliance. We also know that Title II is just one piece of the
web accessibility puzzle and that many folks in this room are advocating for
regulations under Title III that will apply to the digital spaces of public
accommodations. We appreciate the eagerness, and we appreciate your
continued advocacy. 

 

The publication of the web rule marked the culmination of years of hard work
both inside and outside of government, but I would be remiss if I close
today without thanking you. I want to thank the people in this room who
pushed for and contributed to the development of this rule. Your advocacy,
your voice has shown the power and agency of the disability community, and
I’m confident that we will continue to work with you to open new chapters in
the road ahead. Today I close by asking that we just take a moment to pause
and to reflect on the great work that we have done together and to celebrate
the huge steps that we have taken in recent years on our march towards a
more just and accessible world.

 

The US Department of Justice looks forward to continuing that march
alongside all of you, and we will keep marching with you until we achieve an
America where every person who is blind or low-vision can live free from
discrimination with equal access to opportunity and the full capacity to
achieve their dreams.

 

Thank you!

 

---------- 

[PHOTO CAPTION: Judge David Tatel and Deepa Goraya smile together on the
dais.]


Telling Our Stories: A Conversation about Blindness, Justice, and Shattering
Misconceptions from the Federal Bench


by Judge David Tatel and Deepa Goraya

 

>From the Associate Editor: On the afternoon of July 8, 2024, the final
presentation of the 2024 National Convention prior to the banquet was a
conversation between Deepa Goraya, a leader in the National Association of
Blind Lawyers, and Judge David Tatel, who retired from the United States
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2023 and recently
published a memoir entitled Vision. The court on which Judge Tatel served is
one of the most influential in our nation, other than the Supreme Court of
the United States, because it has original jurisdiction over many cases in
which the regulations and other activities of federal agencies are
litigated. The conversation was both a fascinating glimpse of Judge Tatel’s
personal and professional lives and a bracing reminder of how the advocacy
of the National Federation of the Blind has changed history and why it will
continue to be crucial if the blind and others with disabilities are to
remain equal under the law. Judge Tatel not only reminded us of our progress
but called us to work harder and more strategically at all levels of our
government.

 

In introducing the presentation, President Riccobono pointed out that before
Judge Tatel’s appointment to the federal bench, one of his jobs was heading
the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Health, Education, and
Welfare (HEW), now the Department of Health and Human Services, during the
Carter Administration. At that time, although the Rehabilitation Act
(including its critical Section 504 banning disability discrimination in
federal programs) had been passed in 1973, both the Nixon and Carter
administrations had refused to issue regulations interpreting and enforcing
it. The National Federation of the Blind was one of several disability
advocacy organizations who sued HEW to force the release of the regulations.
This is important context for understanding the part of the conversation in
which President Riccobono participates toward its end. Here is the
presentation:  

 

DEEPA GORAYA: Thank you, President Riccobono. Good afternoon, Federation
family. [Cheers] I’m Deepa Goraya and I’m here with Judge Tatel. Good
afternoon, Judge Tatel. I wanted to start out by asking you about your book.
I’m in the middle of reading your book. It’s called Vision, and it’s on
Audible and also on Amazon, and there is a QR code that gives 20 percent off
to NFB members. So, I highly recommend it. And Judge Tatel, I wanted to ask
starting out, is this your first NFB convention by the way?

 

JUDGE DAVID TATEL: Yes. [Cheers]

 

DEEPA: Awesome!

 

JUDGE TATEL: And I'm very pleased, I’m very—Edie and I are just totally
delighted to be here.

 

DEEPA: Great to have you here. I wanted to start out by asking: you started
to lose your sight as you became an adult, and in your book you talk about
how you’re not known as the blind judge, but you regret not making that
known. Can you talk about that inner struggle?

 

JUDGE TATEL: Deepa, you went right to the heart of the book awfully fast.
[Laughter]

 

DEEPA: We only have twenty minutes. [More laughter]

 

JUDGE TATEL: I’m going to answer your question, but I want to thank
President Riccobono for this wonderful opportunity to talk about my book. He
already introduced my wife Edie, but I want to introduce her again. Much of
this book is about Edie and me together and our lives together. And I also
want to introduce my guide dog Vixen, who is right here next to me. [Cheers]
So as I said, Deepa went right to the heart of the book. I was diagnosed
with RP when I was fifteen years old in 1957. Like other people with RP, I
had trouble seeing at night up until then, and no one knew what it was. This
was a very long time ago. I was finally diagnosed at the National Institutes
of Health. I was fifteen years old, and I tell the story in the book that I
didn’t want to talk about it. I look back on that... that was sixty years
ago. I can almost look back at fifteen-year-old David Tatel as if he's
someone else. And I ask myself, why did he do what he did? Well, he was
fifteen, he wanted to be like his friends. Kids want to be like their
friends. I developed all kinds of techniques for covering up my growing
visual disability, techniques that expanded as my sight declined more. When
I went to college and law school, I was functioning as a sighted person,
although problems at night were growing, my peripheral vision was declining,
and I was struggling to find other ways to deal with it without having to
discuss it. Finally, when I was thirty-five and director of the Lawyers
Committee for Civil Rights under Law, the same job by the way that Kristen
Clarke had years later, I finally couldn’t really function anymore sighted
and I learned to use Braille and started using readers. So that's the
background. In 1994, when President Clinton nominated me to the DC Circuit,
I was using a cane, but I was still—it wasn’t much of a subject of
conversation for me. And I wanted to be on the DC Circuit. It was the thrill
of a life, but I wanted to be known as a judge who happened to be blind, not
as a blind judge. And I would say that I’ve been in the court for thirty
years until I retired, I had written over seven hundred opinions. And I like
to think, I hope people think that I succeeded in those years in proving
that I was a judge who just happened to be blind.

 

[Applause] And if I could say one more thing, Deepa, because it brings me to
the point I want to make, which is that people ask, “Well, why did you write
this book?” It’s not a book I really wanted to write. I was convinced by
people who I care about that my story could be inspirational, not just to
blind people, but to sighted people who hire blind people. And I hope that
the story the book tells will demonstrate to the world, to both blind and to
be honest mostly sighted people, that blind people can function at the very
highest levels, and that the David Tatel who served on the DC Circuit for
thirty years was a judge who just happened to be blind. So that’s my story.

 

DEEPA: Thanks for that. Going along with that, do you think your career
would have been any different had you disclosed your blindness sooner, and
have you experienced any discrimination in the workplace because of your
blindness?

 

JUDGE TATEL: [Laughs] Sorry to laugh, but Deepa probably read this book more
carefully than anybody so far. [Laughter] Deepa, I actually don’t know the
answer to that question. And I think—I would really be interested to know
what people think who read the book. When I was struggling with increasing
deterioration of my sight, it was a very different world than it is today.
Not as different as it should be, but still very different from it is today.
I worried—this was in the 1970s, a long time ago, when I was beginning to
practice law, going through law school and beginning to practice law—I
worried that my employment opportunities would be limited if people knew I
had a visual disability. It was that clear to me at that time. And I
actually don’t think, as I look back on the experience, that thirty-year-old
David Tatel was unjustified in thinking that. [Light applause] So Deepa, I
don't know. I do know this: as hard as I worked to downplay my declining
vision, people who knew me and who worked with me, they knew. As I wrote
this book, I interviewed some old friends, quite a few of them, and I asked
them, you know the old famous question, what did they know and when did they
know it? [Some laughter] And they were aware of my declining sight long
before I was prepared to talk about it. So, I guess the bottom line is I
still don't know the answer to the question. I do know this: I talk in the
book about how important role models were to me. Lawyers who were the kind
of civil rights lawyer I wanted to be when I grew up. They were very
important to me, because they gave me a symbol of what I wanted, but they
were also helpful in my career. What I did not have when I was thirty years
old was any role models who were blind. None. There were no blind appeals
court judges that I knew of. There were no partners in law firms who were
blind that I knew of.

 

So, I didn’t have that kind of a role model. And one of the reasons, I
think, why I wrote this book is that I hope that people who are at the same
stage of vision loss today that I was fifty years ago will see my story and
my career as a role model for them. [Applause]

 

DEEPA: Thanks for that. A lot of us do experience this inner struggle where
we try to figure out how much to disclose blindness and when, or in the
workplace and not in the workplace, and especially those of us who have low
vision or are not in that stage where we’re ready to make our blindness
visible, the book really highlights that struggle, and I recommend people
read that to understand that and know you're not alone in your struggle. In
the book you talk about being a parent of four children and how your
children kind of took your blindness in stride and did stuff, but that came
naturally to them, like describing things, going on hikes with you. Was
wondering if you could talk about your experiences as a blind parent and how
that was, if you encountered any struggles with that.

 

JUDGE TATEL: By the time our first child Rebecca was four or five years old
and aware of things around her, I at that point—I wasn’t using a cane, but I
was learning to use recorded books and I was beginning to function more
visibly as someone with a visual disability. I mention that only because all
four of our children, their only experience was with a dad who had limited
vision. We have four fabulous kids. They’re all parents. One is even a
grandparent now. They’re four fabulous human beings and great parents. And
we asked them at the beginning of the process, we sent them a questionnaire
that Edie and I wrote, a dozen questions, and they all responded with
written memos, which are just total treasures to us. And we learned a lot
from them.

 

And I quote in the book in different places their observations about growing
up with a blind dad. And there’s lots of them throughout. I’ll just mention
two of them. One of them said... she went out with some friends, parents
drove somewhere, and she came back, and she said to her siblings, “I didn’t
know that dads drove cars.” Because in our house, Edie drove the car. And
Emily, our youngest, tells a story that still moves both of us so much. She
said one of her friends asked her, “What’s it like to have a blind dad?”

 

And she said, “It’s just like having any other dad. He loves us just the
same way any other dad does.” She said, “I felt loved, and it didn’t make
any difference to me.”

 

>From my side of it, being a parent, I was more dependent—well, two things I
want to say. One is at the same time we were having children—and it was the
time when parents read to their children—I was learning to use talking books
at the Library of Congress, and I learned to listen to books with the
children. And that was magic. All four of the children grew up reading
bedtime stories with me with talking books. I loved it and they loved it.
And I don’t think I lost anything as a dad with limited sight because of the
wonderful books. And I did it with my grandchildren too; it’s gone one after
the other. And the other thing I will say is, you know, I was more dependent
on my children than sighted dads are, both for just moving around. It was
natural in our family for the children to take an arm when I needed it. And
I never even had to ask, by the way, which has gone on to the next
generation. Even the littlest grandchildren still do that in the Tatel
family. And the book is full of stories about that. Probably the most
dramatic example of a dad depending on his children is my years of skiing in
Colorado with the BOLD program, and probably a lot of you know about BOLD in
Colorado. But the end, the last four or five years of skiing, two of my
children became my guides, and talk about a dramatic example of parents
relying on their children, me skiing down the big berm led by my teenage
daughter and son was about as dramatic an example you can find of anything.
[Applause]

 

DEEPA: I’m learning how to ski myself.

 

JUDGE TATEL: We’ll talk about that afterwards. [Laughter]

 

DEEPA: I want to get to an important question before we run out of time. A
big one. What problems do you see stemming from the Chevron decision that
came out a few days ago from the Supreme Court for disability rights, and
how can the blindness movement come together to combat these problems?
[Laughter]

 

JUDGE TATEL: Do we need to say what Chevron is? 

 

DEEPA: Sure, why don’t you?

 

JUDGE TATEL: Do you want to do it?

 

DEEPA: No, you go ahead.

 

JUDGE TATEL: Deepa asked an important question for our country as a whole,
but also for the disability community. Chevron is the doctrine, named for a
Supreme Court opinion, it’s not a gas station. [Laughter] It’s a major
Supreme Court opinion, Chevron versus the Natural Resources Defense Council,
from I think sometime in the 1980s, a unanimous decision of the Supreme
Court, which said that when a court like mine reviews a regulation issued by
an agency—let’s make this specific to the issue that everyone is concerned
about. Let’s take, for example, the regulations issued by federal agencies
under Section 504 and the ADA, all right? I mean, those are the regulations
we all care about in this room. What Chevron says is that when the agency
issues those regulations, or when it announces interpretations of them, and
they’re challenged in court, which they always are, right? The Court has to
ask two questions. The first is does the statute—that is 504, the ADA,
whatever the statute is—does the statute clearly make the regulation
invalid? In other words, has the agency exceeded its authority under the
statute? And if so, the Court has no choice but to vacate it. But those are
very rare cases. The second part of Chevron is, if the statute is unclear,
if it’s ambiguous because it uses general language, then the courts have to
defer to the agency's reasonable interpretation of the statute, okay? So,
let’s take, for example, the disability laws, right? They're very general
statutes. They speak in very general terms. Thou shalt not discriminate on
the basis of a disability. [Applause] That’s what it says.

 

And the agencies, in my case HEW or Justice Department, interpret that
general language by issuing specific regulations saying exactly what that
means in practice. What exactly do the schools and universities have to do
to accommodate blind students? What do they have to do in terms of Braille?
What do they have to do in terms of readers? What exactly is their
obligation? They flesh out the statutory language. When those get challenged
in court, since obviously statute language says you can’t discriminate based
on disability, does it clearly prohibit the agency from saying schools have
to provide readers for the blind? The question is, is that a reasonable
interpretation of the statute? And one of the reasons why I think the
agencies that enforce these laws have been so successful—not as successful
as they should be yet, but still successful—is because the courts have
deferred to the agencies under those. That’s what happened for the past
forty years. These agencies, these regulations that flesh out the general
language of disability laws have survived legal challenge because the courts
have deferred to them. The Supreme Court last week overruled Chevron. That’s
no longer the law. So now the question will be, judges like me who have
these cases will have nothing to go on but the general language of the
statute. We'll have the agency’s interpretation, but we’ll have no
obligation to “defer” to it. We can read it as we would a brief, but it has
no binding effect on us. My worry is there will be a huge amount of
litigation in the next few years challenging agency regulations, not just
from the disability field but throughout, and the courts will strike down
lots of these, because the language is so general. The courts will say—I’m
talking about conservative courts—their view will be that unless Congress
specifically authorizes something, the agencies can’t do it. And this is
very dangerous right now, because it’s bad enough without Chevron, but our
federal courts are becoming increasingly hostile to federal agencies and the
regulations they issue, and I think it’s going to be a huge battle for civil
rights advocates, whether under Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964]
or the disability laws to defend the progress made with all of these
regulations. I think this is a serious turning point. It’s going to be a
major challenge for the lawyers working in the disability community to what
has been accomplished and keeping agencies aggressively enforcing disability
laws in the future. It’s a serious problem.

 

DEEPA: Do you have any ideas on what we can do as the organized blind
movement or other disability groups, you know, combating these?

 

JUDGE TATEL: This isn’t the first time in my career we’ve faced a challenge
from hostile courts. We faced it before. This is actually the worst, I
think. It’s going to require superb lawyering. I’m looking at this from the
point of view of a lawyer. There are so many things that groups like NFB can
do in terms of organizing and bringing attention to the problem and raising
money. But the fact is the battle is going to be fought out in the courts,
and it’s going to require superb lawyering. So, the simple answer is, Deepa,
people should go to law school. People should learn to litigate.

 

DEEPA: More lawyers, yep. [Applause]

 

JUDGE TATEL: And NFB and other groups should develop the toughest, most
aggressive legal groups you can. Because they’re going to be badly needed.
Can I say one more thing? One more thing I will add here. And this may sound
naive, but our government has three branches of government, not just one.
It’s not just the courts. It’s Congress and the president. And although it
seems like an uphill battle, both of those branches can be a check on the
courts. And so one thing we should be focusing on is Congress. We should be
getting Congress to write legislation that is specific enough to support
what the agency is doing, so it’s very clear that when the agencies issue
strong disability regulations, it’s supported by the law. Same thing when it
comes to presidential elections. You should be voting for presidents that
understand what their obligations are to faithfully enforce the law. Then
there is the entire fifty-state government system and state and local
governments, which aren't affected by these regressive Supreme Court cases.
A huge amount could be done at the state and local level. So that takes
organizing state by state. It takes raising money. It takes electing good
members of state legislatures. It takes supporting legislative activities of
those bodies. It takes working with the governors’ offices, mayors’ offices,
city councils. A huge amount can be done to protect civil rights at the
state and local level in this country. [Applause]

 

DEEPA: More advocates, legal and otherwise. 

 

PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: That’s right.

 

DEEPA: I don’t know how much time we have left, but I have a couple more
questions.

 

PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: No time left, [Laughter] but there are many questions
we could ask, so I hope this won’t be the last opportunity. But I do think,
Judge Tatel, we should ask you to give a minute or a minute and a half to
what role the National Federation of the Blind has played in your success,
because I know you have had many intersections with the Federation over the
years, and particularly one service can be but there might be others.

 

JUDGE TATEL: I think the point you made right at the beginning—when I became
OCR director, it was the beginning of the Carter administration, which if
you remember your history followed the Nixon-Ford administration, and the
Nixon-Ford administration had done everything it could to close down the
civil rights programs and even refused to issue the Section 504 regulations,
and the civil rights groups, including the National Federation of the Blind
sued HEW/OCR. So, when I became the director, I became the defendant in the
lawsuit brought by the NFB to force HEW/OCR to issue the regulations and
enforce the law. The reason that is so important is that it’s a great
example of how advocates on the outside could work with advocates on the
inside to do things that neither could do alone. I could not have gotten the
504 regulations issued or the policy interpretations we issued under them, I
couldn’t have got that done without the pressure of NFB and the other civil
rights groups. Because when I would make the case in the Carter
administration for issuing these regulations and get pushback, my answer
would say, “Well, you can push back all you want, but there is a federal
judge supervising what we’re doing, and he’s going to rule against us if we
don’t issue the regulations.” So it was a great example, as I said, of how
powerful advocacy groups like NFB can shape how government agencies work,
particularly if your allies take jobs in the administration. It’s a great
combination.

 

PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: Thank you for being an ally, Judge Tatel. [Applause] We
do need to say, though, that you are one of the most avid users of
NFB-NEWSLINE®. I know that is a daily tool that you have used, and it’s
talked about in the book, and Judge Tatel probably many questions we would
love to ask. We’re pleased that you and Edie will be at the banquet tonight.
But I want to point out an important moment here, speaking of NEWSLINE, in
his book, Judge Tatel recognizes a number of people. One of them is one of
our staff who works on NFB-NEWSLINE. This will be his final convention as a
staff member, as he is retiring later this week. So we should give a round
of applause to Bob Watson. [Applause] So Judge Tatel, there are many other
topics that would be great to talk with you about. We’re going to give you
the last word, okay? We will give you the last word. Let me say one more
thing. Which is before you leave the stage, I just want to say, you know,
the National Federation of the Blind has taken on many things, and you talk
about some of those intersections in your book. One of the things that we
did you discuss in your book is accessible currency, and we undertook in
2009, a little bit before that, to get the first ever US coin to have real
readable Braille on it, the bicentennial silver dollar. So before you leave
the stage we are going to give you a Louis Braille bicentennial silver
dollar. [Cheers and applause] You get the last word, Judge Tatel.

 

JUDGE TATEL: In addition to thanking you for this wonderful opportunity, I
want to say, and Edie will vouch for this, I probably spend three hours a
day, seven days a week, with NEWSLINE. From the very beginning. And I don’t
know how many times over the past many years I have sent emails to Bob
Watson and Scott White. For all I know, all those emails to Bob, maybe one
of the reasons he’s retiring is just to get away from them. [Laughter] But
NEWSLINE is the best example I can think of, just a phenomenal program that
allows blind people to function totally independently. I love it.

 

PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: Thank you for being here. I encourage you to read the
book, and we look forward to having you at the banquet and look forward to
the continued relationship to get your wisdom as we do our advocacy with the
courts, and as we get out to vote to make sure we are represented in all the
halls of power.

---------- 

 


Settlement Agreement Improves Accessibility for Blind Test-Takers of the
California Insurance License Exam 


 

>From the Associate Editor: The following is a joint press release issued by
the parties to a legal settlement, along with their legal representatives,
that will ensure that blind people who want to pursue careers selling
insurance in California will not be artificially prevented from doing so.
The National Federation of the Blind was one of the parties to the lawsuit
and the settlement agreement, and Tim Elder, our California president, is
one of the lawyers who represented us. Here is the release:

 

Berkeley, CA, September 5, 2024—In August, three blind individuals and the
National Federation of the Blind reached a settlement agreement with the
California Department of Insurance (CDI) and their licensing examination
vendor, PSI Services LLC (PSI). The settlement resolves claims that both CDI
and PSI failed to ensure the accessibility of CDI’s insurance agent
licensing examinations for blind applicants who use screen reading software
to non-visually access text. 

 

This case was filed on October 12, 2021 by two blind individuals: Angela
Fowler and Miguel Mendez. An additional blind individual, Hy Cohen, and the
National Federation of the Blind later joined the case. All were impacted by
the inaccessible licensing examinations. 

 

Under the settlement agreement, among other things, CDI agreed to no longer
require blind or low-vision test-takers who use screen access software to
first provide medical documentation. Individuals will be able to
self-certify their need for the technology based on blindness or low vision,
without the burdensome accommodations process or delay in examination
scheduling. 

 

PSI will additionally ensure its online testing technology is independently
usable by blind and low-vision users in accordance with Americans with
Disabilities Act accessibility and communication regulations. It will
develop online testing technology that permits the use of screen reader
software and related policies and training for test proctors. 

 

Blind and low-vision test-takers who use screen readers will have access to
the same examination scheduling options as those offered to others without
disabilities.

 

“Equal access to licensure examinations is an important part of finding
employment and advancing careers for blind people,” said Mark Riccobono,
President of the National Federation of the Blind. “This agreement is a
significant step towards ensuring a society that provides equal opportunity
to everyone. We are pleased that this settlement will eliminate obstacles
for blind people and hope that it sets an example that other licensing
bodies and providers of testing technology will emulate.” 

 

“This important case establishes that people who depend on assistive
technology do not need to first provide a doctor’s note before expecting
accessibly designed online exams,” said Timothy Elder of the TRE Legal
Practice. 

 

“Licensing exams are crucial to moving forward in so many career paths, and
this settlement reflects the commitment to ensuring that they are accessible
to blind and low-vision people—and everyone with disabilities—as the law
requires,” said Amelia Evard, Wolinsky Fellowship Attorney at Disability
Rights Advocates. 

 

The case is Fowler, et al. v PSI Services LLC and California Department of
Insurance, Case No. 21CV000126, and was filed on October 12, 2021, in
Alameda County Superior Court. Plaintiffs are represented by Disability
Rights Advocates, a national legal nonprofit that protects and advances the
civil rights of people with disabilities, and TRE Legal Practice, a law firm
fighting for the rights of disabled people. 

 

Disability Rights Advocates is the leading national nonprofit disability
rights legal center. Its mission is to advance equal rights and opportunity
for people with all types of disabilities nationwide in complex,
system-changing class action cases. Thanks to DRA’s precedent-setting work,
people with disabilities across the country have dramatically improved
access to transportation, health care, voting, education and employment.
Visit  <https://dralegal.org/> dralegal.org.

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), headquartered in Baltimore,
defends the rights of blind people of all ages and provides information and
support to families with blind children, older Americans who are losing
vision, and more. Founded in 1940, the NFB is the transformative membership
and advocacy organization of blind Americans with affiliates, chapters, and
divisions in the fifty states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. We believe
in the hopes and dreams of blind people and work together to transform them
into reality. Learn more about our many programs and initiatives at
<https://www.nfb.org/> nfb.org.

TRE Legal Practice is a nationally renowned civil rights law firm focusing
on the rights of the blind and other disabled people to access employment,
education, government programs, public accommodations, accessible technology
and all other aspects of society. It regularly works with the National
Federation of the Blind to advance impact litigation for the benefit of
blind and other disabled individuals. Visit  <https://trelegal.com/>
https://trelegal.com/.

---------- 

[PHOTO CAPTION: Jonathan Mosen]

 


Jonathan Mosen Brings His Expertise to the National Federation of the Blind


 

The National Federation of the Blind is excited to announce that we have
engaged Jonathan Mosen to help advance our strategic priorities in
technology, accessibility, and communications to build further capacity
within the organized blind movement. Jonathan Mosen has been a well-known
and trusted voice in the blind community for over a quarter of a century—his
most recent work includes the Living Blindfully podcast and the internet
radio station Mushroom FM. Along with podcasting and commercial radio
experience, Jonathan is or has been a CEO, thought leader, advocate, change
agent, government relations professional, author, information technology
consultant, internet start-up founder, candidate for Parliament, IT product
designer, and non-profit chair.

 

We commend and thank Mr. Mosen for the significant contributions to the
global blind community, in acknowledgement of which we recognized his
podcast with the Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award this year. Indeed, it is this
stellar work on Living Blindfully and throughout his career that makes Mosen
an ideal fit for our mission.

 

Jonathan Mosen discovered the organized blind movement through access to the
CompuServe Information Service in 1986. He credits this discovery that
others had a similar outlook on blindness to his own with helping him combat
significant depression and probably saving his life. He attended his first
NFB National Convention in 1995 and has attended several since then.

 

“The success of our movement has always come from the talent and leadership
of blind people innovating and advocating for themselves by contributing to
a shared mission,” said Mark Riccobono, President of the National Federation
of the Blind. “Jonathan Mosen is one of the everyday blind people who has
demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to living the life he wants while
making the world better for all blind people. We are excited to have him
provide strategic leadership as part of our movement as we confront the
challenges and opportunities faced by the global blind community in the
second quarter of the twenty-first century.”

 

Jonathan Mosen shared:

 

Having the opportunity to work with the organized blind movement feels like
coming home. For decades, the Federation has provided me with solidarity and
solace. Now, it is my honor to participate in its important work. The
Federation is the most successful advocacy organization of the blind
anywhere in the world. One reason for that is that it is constantly
assessing what is going on in wider society and how the Federation must
respond. The increasingly complex area of technology continues to offer
opportunities and challenges, so President Riccobono has made the call that
we must take our advocacy to a new level.

 

Gone are the days when the technology we used was developed by a handful of
small companies dedicated to blindness. Now, many mainstream companies are
access technology companies. We must ensure our issues are understood and
given their rightful priority. If they are not, it directly affects the
ability to live the lives we want. There is much to do, and I look forward
to working with the Federation family and key players to deliver impactful
change.

---------- 

 

[PHOTO CAPTION: Amy Buresh]


Nebraska Center for the Blind Celebrating Fifty Years Honoring the Past,
Shaping the Future


by Amy Buresh

 

>From the Editor: The program in Nebraska has long been a recognized leader
in rehabilitation for the blind, its roots extending back into the 70s. It
is with pleasure that we run this piece in honor of its programs and in
honor of the Federation spirit of its author and so many of the staff who
have worked and now work there.

 

The Nebraska Center for the Blind, a cherished program of the Nebraska
Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired, is joyfully celebrating its
fiftieth anniversary! Please join us in commemorating this milestone on
Tuesday, October 15, 2024.

 

The celebration will take place at our NCBVI main office: 4600 Valley Road,
Lincoln, NE 68510. The festivities begin at 10:00 a.m.

 

In honor of this special occasion, we invite you to share your heartfelt
memories or congratulatory messages with us. 

 

You can send your voice recordings or written messages to
<mailto:ncbvi.anniversary at gmail.com> ncbvi.anniversary at gmail.com or leave a
voicemail by calling 402-413-1636. Your stories and well-wishes will add a
personal touch to our celebration and help us reflect on the incredible
journey we’ve shared.

---------- 

[PHOTO CAPTION: Amy Porterfield]

 


National Association of Blind Rehabilitation Professionals Annual Division
Meeting: A Summary


by Amy Porterfield

 

>From the Editor: These are the division reports we plead for after each
convention. Here is a really good one from Amy:

 

On Friday, July 5, 2024, the National Association of Blind Rehabilitation
Professionals held its annual division meeting at the National Federation of
the Blind convention in Orlando, Florida. The gathering was an opportunity
for members to reinforce their positive philosophy of blindness and support
each other in maintaining high expectations for both them and their blind
consumers.

 

The meeting began with a networking session, where over eighty attendees
reconnected with old friends and made new connections. This was a great
opportunity for networking on job openings as well as the latest happenings
in the blindness rehabilitation field. Attendees were reminded to check in
with the division secretary and treasurer to join or renew their membership,
with annual dues set at $5. It is suggested to pay ahead to remain current
with the December 31 membership year-end.

 


Becoming NBPCB Certified Instructors


Joni Martinez, a member of the National Blindness Professionals
Certification Board, provided valuable information on obtaining various
certifications, such as the National Orientation and Mobility Certification
(NOMC), Rehabilitation Teacher National Certification (NCRTB), and Access
Technology Instructor (NCATB). Martinez outlined several pathways to
certification:

 

1.	Master’s Degree Programs: Earn a master’s degree in guidance and
counseling with specializations in Orientation and Mobility (O&M) or
Rehabilitation Teaching (RT) from Louisiana Tech University. After
completing the degree, candidates can sit for the certification exams.
2.	Graduate Certificates: Obtain a graduate certificate from Louisiana
Tech University, targeting the certification areas directly. Upon
completion, candidates can take the certification exams.

Both routes require a three-month immersion program at an NBPCB training
center, required coursework at Louisiana Tech University, and an internship
at an approved training center.

 

3.	Apprenticeship Programs: These do not require a degree but involve
completing a full immersion program at an NBPCB training center, followed by
a four-month apprenticeship at a different NBPCB training center. Afterward,
candidates can sit for the NOMC, NCRTB, or NCATB exams.

Additionally, one may earn a National Certification in Unified English
Braille (NCUEB) by passing an exam consisting of proofreading, writing, and
multiple-choice questions.

 


Business Enterprise Program Insights


Michael Colbrunn, Vice President of the National Association of Blind
Merchants, shared his journey to becoming a BEP operator. He emphasized that
quality operators are typically self-starters with strong core blindness
skills, such as good travel, access technology, and independent living
skills. Colbrunn addressed common misconceptions about the program, noting
that some rehabilitation counselors mistakenly suggest it for consumers
lacking other career goals. To combat this, NABRP and the Blind Merchants
division will offer combined webinars to provide professional development on
the Business Enterprise Program, its governing laws and policies, and how to
best support blind consumers choosing BEP as a career.

 


Consumer Certified Rehabilitation Counselor Training


Anil Lewis, Executive Director of the Jernigan Institute, National
Federation of the Blind, gave an update on a new consumer-driven training
initiative for rehabilitation counselors. This collaboration between the
Jernigan Institute and NABRP aims to offer authentic, lived-experience-based
training to counselors. The modules are nearly complete, with several states
expressing interest in implementing the training by fall 2024. Lewis
highlighted the lack of direct blindness training in typical Rehabilitation
Counseling master’s degree programs and the need for authentic,
consumer-driven education to better support blind consumers.

 


Collaborating with the NFB Employment Committee


Lia Stone, Co-Chair of the NFB Employment Committee, led an interactive
discussion on partnering with rehabilitation counselors. Key outcomes
included plans for a joint meeting to set collaborative goals, developing
webinars on making a career out of gig work, and creating a database of
successfully employed consumers. This collaboration aims to enhance support
for blind consumers and vocational rehabilitation counselors.

 


Advances in AI for the Workplace


Ryan Jones (Vispero), Bryan Bashin (Be My Eyes), and Everette Bacon (Aira)
discussed recent advancements in AI technologies for visual interpretation.
Highlights included:

 

*	JAWS Picture Smart: This tool allows users to select and analyze
pictures for descriptions. Recent updates enable detailed descriptions
within the application and access to Gemini and ChatGPT services for further
information, revolutionizing access to charts, graphs, maps, and other
images in educational and professional settings.
*	Aira: Offers image description and access to ChatGPT within its
Windows app. Aira is launching consumer-based training to improve AI
interactions with blind users, offering additional free minutes for active
users.
*	Be My AI: The first to utilize and offer image description with
ChatGPT, including facial descriptions. Its Windows-based AI app integrates
seamlessly with other applications, and future updates will include
on-the-fly visual interpretation using video feeds.

Presenters emphasized the importance of safe and effective nonvisual travel
skills and environmental knowledge to maximize the benefits of these AI
services.

 


Accessible Job Seekers Toolkit


Richard Rueda from the APH ConnectCenter introduced an online job seekers
toolkit developed by the American Printing House for the Blind. This free
resource, available through the NSITE learning platform, provides
comprehensive training for blind individuals seeking employment. It consists
of five courses, each taking approximately one hour to complete. The
National Association of Blind Rehabilitation Professionals Division will
host a joint webinar to provide an overview of the training and how to
access the course.

 


Division Business Meeting and Elections


The meeting concluded with the Division business meeting and elections. The
following individuals were elected to leadership positions:

 

*	President: Amy Porterfield
*	First Vice President: Pam Allen
*	Second Vice President: Julie Deden
*	Secretary: Jamie Sibson
*	Treasurer: Amy Buresh
*	Board Position 1: Shirley Robinson
*	Board Position 2: Carly Prince
*	Board Position 3 for one year: Melody Roane
*	Board Position 4 for one year: Daphne Mitchell

As the meeting adjourned, attendees left with a renewed sense of purpose and
commitment to advancing opportunities and support for blind rehabilitation
professionals and the individuals they serve. We look forward to another
year of progress and collaboration.

--------- 

 

[PHOTO CAPTION: Vincent Tagliarino plays the piano.]


My Dream, My Business, and My Life


by Vincent M. Tagliarino

 

>From the Editor: One of the most popular articles it has been my pleasure to
work on was run in March of 2013. It was popular then because it was written
by a longtime Federationist whose commitment was longstanding, significant,
and exemplifies what we look for in having people join us in this work. 

 

I recently received this note from Chris Minkler, the president of the
Buffalo Chapter of the NFB of New York. 

 

“Gary, our longest serving member of the NFB of New York State died on
Wednesday, July 24. Vinnie Tagliarino was a member of the NFB of New York
State for sixty-eight years. Vinnie was a founding member of the NFB of New
York State in 1956. He served for many years as president of the NFB Buffalo
chapter, beginning in 1977. Except for one term in the eighties, he was the
Chapter president until 1999. He then served fourteen years as Chapter vice
president. Vinnie wrote an article about his life for the Braille Monitor
years ago. Gary, I know you sometimes re-print old articles. I request that
you re-print the article Vinnie wrote about his life. Regards, Chris Minkler
president NFB Buffalo Chapter.”

 

Here is the editor’s note and the article we ran eleven years ago.

 

Most articles that come to my attention are in an electronic format.
Occasionally I get an article in Braille, but less frequently do I get one
in print. Never does anything these days come from a typewriter, with the
mistakes and strikeovers that are so easily corrected with a word processor.
This one did, but I hope you will agree it was well worth the effort to
transcribe and edit.

 

Some of the history we have covered in recent issues has emphasized the
importance of a university education, but a valid question that blind people
whose strength isn’t found in books repeatedly ask is “What’s out there for
me?” Vincent’s story shows that success comes in many forms and doesn’t
always require a college education or an advanced degree. What is required
is identifying one’s talent, exercising the discipline to develop it, and
creating the opportunity to try to succeed in making a dream come true. Here
is how it happened for Vincent Tagliarino, a charter member of the Buffalo
Chapter of the NFB of New York:

 

Most of my relatives and friends call me Vinny. I had sight until I was
eleven years old. Then I started having problems reading the blackboard at a
distance. The eye doctor told my parents that I should not strain my eyes,
so a friend who had the same eye condition (retinitis pigmentosa) told me
that there was a school for the blind in Batavia called the New York State
School for the Blind. My parents applied on my behalf, and off I went.

The school made me repeat fifth grade because I had to learn how to read and
write Braille. They said that it would take me about a year to do it well. I
am extremely happy they made me learn Braille because to this day everything
I do revolves around being able to read and write. Unlike the situation for
today’s school children, I had no choice; Braille it was.

In addition to the normal subjects one studies in school such as reading,
writing, arithmetic, and history, the school gave students the opportunity
to learn several trades. It offered courses in music, piano tuning,
woodworking, poultry (yes, the care and feeding of chickens), home
economics, and others I don't now remember.

 

I knew what I wanted to be; my dream was to become a musician and own a
music store. In elementary school I signed up for piano lessons and band.
After I entered high school, I signed up to learn how to be a piano tuner.
They offered excellent training, and I was impressed by the fact that my
piano-tuning teacher was partially blind. After five years of piano lessons,
I was able to sign up to learn to play the pipe organ. I stayed in Batavia
for two extra years to learn other skills that would help me in starting and
running a business: how to keep the books, make out bills, and write
business letters.

 

The year I graduated I had to put on a graduation recital using the pipe
organ and the piano. The public was invited, and my family came up from
Buffalo to hear me play. After graduation I got a scholarship to a summer
music camp and enough money for the first semester at Hartwick College in
northeastern New York State. Unfortunately, my parents did not have enough
money for me to continue my college education, so I returned to Buffalo to
live.

 

The first thing I had to do was join the musician’s union in order to play
in hotels and banquet facilities. The union listed me in the union directory
as a piano, accordion, and organ musician. I was also listed as a piano
tuner and technician. The latter was a fortunate listing because it helped
me meet many piano players who needed someone to tune their instruments.

 

In my second year out of school and still with no work, I was fortunate to
audition for a quartet that played on the road. They knew I was blind and
didn’t care; all they cared about was that I play well enough to be in their
band. I traveled extensively in New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New
York state. Not only did I earn some money and do some traveling, but I
proved that I could sell myself as a blind person and as a musician. This
gave me the confidence to keep on trying when times got tough. It confirmed
for me what the National Federation of the Blind said about blind people,
and I have spent most of my life trying to communicate that message to blind
and sighted people alike.

 

After six months on the road, I was offered a job playing piano six nights a
week in Buffalo. I took that job because the band did not always have work,
and this job let me stay home and avoid the expenses that came with
traveling. A blind friend who also graduated from the school for the blind
in Batavia was teaching organ and piano lessons in the Wurlitzer Music Store
in downtown Buffalo. He was able to get a grand piano to work on and asked
me if I could help him recondition it to sell. His idea was that in this way
we could both make some money for ourselves. At no charge the store gave us
a spot where we could recondition it, and we went to work. While at the
store I met the other piano tuners who worked there and also got to know the
salesmen. Six months later one of the piano tuners retired, and I was
offered a full-time job as the inside piano tuner for this five-floor music
store. Needless to say, I was very happy.

 

In my four years working in the store, I met many musicians and people who
wanted me to tune their pianos. These became my private customers, and I
handled their business on evenings and weekends. In 1960 I left the store
and started my own business doing piano tuning. My mother helped me by
driving three days a week, and I hired a part-time driver for the other two
days. When I branched out and started to get busy doing repair work, my
father let me use his workshop in the basement. Before long I got so much
work that I needed more space. The work was starting to take over the house,
so I asked my parents if I could build a shop in the back. They said okay,
and I immediately went to the bank for a loan. I hired my uncle to do the
work. He knocked down the old garage and built a thirty-by-thirty building.
With this space I was able to bring in bigger items to work on, and I also
started buying used pianos to recondition and sell.

 

Soon I got into the business of selling new pianos. Before long I once again
needed more room. About a block away from my shop, I saw a “for rent” sign
on a storefront property. I signed a one-year lease with the option to renew
it for a second year. I soon realized I needed more money to buy merchandise
and equipment to operate the store and made an appointment with the
Commission for the Blind and Visually Handicapped to see if they could help
me purchase these things. After I filled out the paperwork and waited
several weeks, the Buffalo office of the agency okayed my application and
sent it off to Albany, where the higher-ups had their headquarters. A few
weeks later I received disappointing news; my request for money to expand my
business had been rejected.

 

Now what could I do? I had already rented the store and ordered the
merchandise to fill it. I and those from whom I had purchased my stock had
assumed approval from the district office was sufficient. The warehouse had
shipped my showcases and other equipment to the store. This was quite a blow
to me, so I went to the owner of the warehouse and described my predicament.
He felt very sympathetic and understood my situation. He made a deal with
me. He asked how much money I could come up with, and, when I told him, he
agreed to make me a loan from his own pocket at no interest. Even with this
help I had to borrow more money from the bank, but I was able to open the
store.

 

After a year I decided not to renew the lease. The expenses were a little
too high. I moved back into my original shop, but several of my friends were
excited about what I was doing and wanted to help me meet other people who
might increase my business. I was encouraged to join an exclusive business
club that offered me a deal I couldn’t refuse. In exchange for playing piano
at their parties for no charge, I would not have to pay their membership
fees, and I would get drinks and food at no cost to me. What a deal! I met a
lot of great businesspeople, and, as my friends had expected, this paid off.

 

Eventually I was fortunate enough to get a franchise on new pianos. Again, I
started running out of room, so I asked my parents if I could put a
storefront on the house and open the whole downstairs area to the public.
They said all right, and again I got a contractor to make the needed
modifications to the building. Money being tight, I asked an aunt, with whom
I was close, if I could borrow some money to pay the contractor, and she
said yes. Once again, my business was growing and prospering.

 

Some eight years later I told my wife that I wanted a bigger store near the
University of Buffalo. I found a store for sale on Main Street across from
the University. Because of a fire in the building, it needed a great deal of
remodeling, both inside and out. My wife joked that only a blind guy would
buy it, but I saw visions of what this building could be when I was done
with it. So, I put in a bid and got the building. To buy the building and
remodel it, I went to the Small Business Administration for a loan and
eventually got it.

 

What helped this business grow was the name. I named my business Buffalo
Piano Sales and Tuning, Inc., with Tagg’s Music as a division of the
corporation. I thought that with a big name like that I would get a great
deal of business, and I did. Three large school systems, several nursing and
assisted living facilities, a number of churches, and many residential
customers came to trust me to do their work. My business soon employed three
professional servicemen, including me. One tuner worked in the shop, one did
the residential calls, and I did the commercial work. Because I could do
anything required to service a piano, I did more concert work than any other
piano tuner in western New York. I can say this with confidence because I
worked with one promoter who sponsored concerts six nights a week, Monday
through Saturday, and a different concert on Sunday. Many of these concerts
were held in a large tent that held about 3,300 people. I had to tune every
Monday before the opening night and Sundays before the evening concert.
There were about fifty to sixty tunings in the summer alone. Two other big
promoters held their concerts at the football stadium. Working for them
meant I met many stars. I came to feel very good about myself, knowing I
could compete quite successfully with sighted tuners and still manage to
build a successful business.

 

In my many years in business I have learned that it is essential to know
your profession thoroughly and to do anything you must do to satisfy the
customer. This I was and still am able to do. In addition to tuning and
repair, I write up insurance estimates on damaged pianos and give second
opinions to many customers who have problem pianos and have been discouraged
from fixing them. Many of these I am able to repair.

 

Back in 1956 I was involved in starting the Buffalo Chapter of the National
Federation of the Blind. At that time it was called the Empire State
Association of the Blind. I was a charter member, have been a member for
fifty-seven years, and have been on the board of directors for most of that
time. In 1977 I became president of the chapter and served for twenty-two
years until 1999. At that time I asked the chapter to vote in my vice
president as our leader; they voted me in as vice president, and I am still
proudly serving today.

 

Since I joined as a charter member, this organization has been very dear to
me. I have worked with Dr. Jernigan; Dr. Maurer, for whom I have tremendous
respect; and James Gashel, who taught me much about how to work with other
people who are blind. When we had a lawsuit against the Blind Association of
Western New York, Mr. Gashel and I were on television several times. I was
also on the radio for four hours talking about our issues concerning the
blind in the sheltered shop. One thing I learned in working with James was
that blind people, like sighted people, are quite different from one
another, that we all have different wants and needs, and we all bring
differing abilities to the world. I learned to understand blind people as
individuals.

 

In the fifty-seven years I have been a member of the Buffalo chapter, the
NFB has given me many awards. In 1982 I received my first plaque for
distinguished service. In 2006, at our NFB state convention, the Buffalo
chapter gave me a plaque for fifty years of service, for being a charter
member, and for outstanding service working with the blind. In 2008 the
National Federation of the Blind of New York gave me a plaque for my
volunteer service.

I have long believed what the Federation says about getting out and mixing
with the sighted public to demonstrate that blind people are capable, so I
have made an effort to be involved in several activities outside my
business. I have belonged to the Lions Club for fifty-six years, and in that
time have received awards at all levels from my club, my district, and our
International Lions Clubs. I also belong to the Lancaster Depew Chamber of
Commerce and was nominated for the businessman of the year award in 2006.

 

On December 9, 2011, the Herald Tribune magazine and the front page of the
New York Times newspaper ran an article about a famous jazz musician, Boyd
Dunlop, who is in a nursing facility. He is from Buffalo and played in New
York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other large cities. The nursing home
had a piano which was in bad shape, and I was called upon to replace two
keys and tune it back to pitch. Mr. Dunlop was so happy that he put my name
in the write-up with him. I received calls from friends in Florida, Georgia,
and North Carolina teasing me about being a celebrity. What fun!

 

I like the philosophy that the National Federation of the Blind has taught
me: as a blind person, you can do it. I have often been encouraged by this
and have tried hard to give that encouragement to others. When people care
enough to help other people, wonderful things can happen. My story
demonstrates it; my life is better for it; and because of my work, the world
is just a little more in tune.

----------

 


NFB Pledge


I pledge to participate actively in the efforts of the National Federation
of the Blind to achieve equality, opportunity, and security for the blind;
to support the policies and programs of the Federation; and to abide by its
constitution.

 

 

 

Warmly,

 

Kristopher I. Crawley 

 

 <https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/> 

 

 
<https://education.acvrep.org/badges/badge.php?hash=18b8ae05639d02d02387d74e
47732a7cb8eeb657>
<https://www.freedomscientific.com/Training/Certification>
<https://www.zoomtext.com/learning/certification>
<https://certification.nvaccess.org/> 

 

Secretary

Assistive Technology Trainers Division

Communications Committee Chair

National Organization Of Blind Black Leaders

Email:  <mailto:KICrawley.NFB at Gmail.com> KICrawley.NFB at Gmail.com 

Phone/Text: (480) 788-9220

 

 

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